Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — BOARD OF TRADE

Pork and Poultry Imports

Sir H. Harrison: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he is taking to restrict the imports of pork and poultry this year to the level of 1964.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. George Darling): None, Sir.

Sir H. Harrison: Is the Minister aware that I consider that to be a very disappointing reply? Is he further aware that according to his own statistics for the early months of this year the imports of poultry and pork, all of which can be produced in this country, were nearly doubled? There is great concern among producers in East Anglia, and the President of the Board of Trade has already had a letter from Porcofram, Ltd., poultry and pig breeders in my constituency.

Mr. Darling: It is best to get the figures in perspective. Imports of pork into this country amount to about 3 per cent. of home consumption, which is rather insignificant against home production. Although, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman says, imports are somewhat higher than they were a year ago, they are still below the import level of three or four years ago, and at the same time home production of pork has increased by 100,000 tons a year during this period. As for poultry, in spite of the increase in imports which the hon. and gallant Gentleman mentioned, these are still only about 4 per cent. of total consumption. There is no case here for further restrictions.

Export Facilities

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the President of the Board of Trade what proposals he has to augment the export drive, particularly in Eastern Europe.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Douglas Jay): I would refer my hon. Friend to my Answer to the hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Alan Williams) yesterday. I propose to continue all the facilities now available to help our exporters sell throughout the world, and to improve on them whenever possible. In the particular case of the Soviet Union and the other countries of Eastern Europe with which we have bilateral trade arrangements, the Board of Trade seeks in negotiation to secure the greatest possible market openings for United Kingdom goods.

Mrs. Short: May I thank my right hon. Friend for that very encouraging reply? It certainly represents a wind of change, and I am very pleased about it. Would my right hon. Friend be prepared to discuss with his right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary the problem of the kind of scientific, technological and commercial representations which we have in embassies abroad? In Eastern Europe we have them only in Moscow and Belgrade. Would it not he a good idea if the commercial representatives in Addis Ababa, Manila and Katmandu were sent to Eastern Europe where they could spearhead our export drive to much greater effect?

Mr. Jay: I should not like to be quite so precise as that, but I do discuss this matter frequently with my right hon. Friend. The main reason for increasing trade with Eastern European countries at the moment is that they are not placing as many orders as they might for British goods.

Patent Office

Mr. Higgins: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make any cost benefit analysis carried out in reaching his decision to move the Patent Office from central London available to Members.

Mr. Jay: In reaching a decision about this matter, I am taking all relevant considerations, including cost, into account.


I do not think, however, that a detailed cost benefit analysis would be profitable.

Mr. Higgins: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for that reply, may I ask him whether he could indicate when a decision on this matter is likely to be made?

Mr. Jay: Very soon.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the delay in making this decision is causing great uncertainty among all users of the Patent Office, as well as among those employed there? Will he announce a decision as soon as possible?

Mr. Jay: I realise that delay is always undesirable, but it is also desirable to reach the right decision.

Restrictive Trading Agreements

Mr. Shepherd: asked the President of Board of Trade whether he will take steps to empower the Registrar of Restrictive Trading Agreements to operate an investigating organisation to secure evidence of clandestine agreements in restriction of trade.

Mr. Jay: The powers already exercised by the Registrar of Restrictive Trading Agreements have brought a significant number of agreements of the kind envisaged by the hon. Member into the register and before the Restrictive Practices Court. However, the Government are considering whether changes in the law would improve its effectiveness in relation to such agreements.

Mr. Shepherd: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that for practical as well as psychological reasons it is now necessary to attack the whole concept of restrictive practices and not to be on the defensive here?

Mr. Jay: I made that criticism when the Government supported by the party opposite introduced the Restrictive Trade Practices Bill. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that some 350 agreements—that is, one in seven—have been brought on to the register by enforcement procedures. Nevertheless, I am still not satisfied with what has been done.

Insurance Companies (Green Card)

Mr. Shepherd: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will refer to the Restrictive Practices Court the charge of £2 for the green card levied in collusion by all the insurance companies in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Jay: I assume that the hon. Member has in mind my powers to make references to the Monopolies Commission in respect of the supply of services. I shall bear his suggestion in mind in this connection.

Mr. Shepherd: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that this green card was previously issued free, and then some gentlemen got together behind closed doors and decided that everyone should pay £2 for something which is a legal requirement? Is this not an urgent matter?

Mr. Jay: Yes. I will certainly take note of that. But the restrictive practices legislation previously introduced refers only to goods, whereas our Monopolies Act of the past year includes services, and therefore, if anything has to be done, it will have to be done through these provisions.

Mr. Peter Emery: May I press the President of the Board of Trade a little further on this? Does he realise that about 1¼ million people go abroad by car each year, which means that about ¾ million cars leave this country, requiring green cards? Does he realise that this is felt very strongly by the ordinary motorist, because different excuses are being given? Does the Minister realise that some of the excuses are clerical and some are administrative, from various Departments? This affects a lot of people——

Mr. Speaker: Even if it does affect a lot of people it must be put concisely.

Mr. Emery: Will the Minister, therefore, take any steps he considers necessary to rectify this position?

Mr. Jay: Yes, Sir.

Exports to European Economic Community

Mr. Peter Walker: asked the President of the Board of Trade why British exports to the European Economic Community decreased in the first six months of 1965 as compared with the same period in 1964, in view of the fact that those of the other European Free Trade Association countries increased.

Mr. Jay: To a large extent probably because of differences in the composition of our trade. But it would be unwise to draw any conclusions from so short a period as six months.

Mr. Walker: Is the President of the Board of Trade not concerned that we are the only E.F.T.A. country whose exports to the Common Market were reduced? Is he aware that this is the first time during a six-month period that our exports to the Common Market have gone down?

Mr. Jay: We cannot yet say precisely why this one section of our trade moved this way in this period. On the face of it, it looks as though it might have been due to the fact that coal and sugar, whose prices went down during the period, played a large part in our exports.

Small Firms (Translation of Documents)

Sir E. Errington: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will take steps to make available facilities for translation of documents for small firms anxious to export their goods to foreign markets who have no such facilities of their own.

Mr. Jay: I am not convinced that this is necessary or practicable. Commercial facilities are available, and advice about them can be obtained from trade organisations and the Board of Trade. British missions overseas are always ready to suggest suitable local concerns to undertake this work.

Sir E. Errington: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that in small countries dealing with small firms, the facilities, as well as the expense, cause extreme difficulty? Can he not help?

Mr. Jay: I have investigated this with our posts abroad in Tokyo and elsewhere

and they advise me that facilities are available and that they are willing to give information about what is commercially obtainable by any British exporter. If the hon. Gentleman has evidence that this is not working I should be glad to have it.

Mr. Snow: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the prices of translations are in direct ratio to the complexity of the language; and, since he has mentioned Japan, is he further aware that this very important market is prejudiced, from our exporters' point of view, by the difficulty of getting translations?

Mr. Jay: I was assured by our representatives in Tokyo that facilities were available. We cannot go so far as to take on, as a public responsibility, the direct costs of exporting.

Shipbuilding and Ship-repairing Industry (Loans and Grants)

Mr. Bishop: asked the President of the Board of Trade what sums have been allocated to shipbuilding and ship-repairing industries in each of the past five years by loans or grants; if he will give details of such sums; and what public control there is in the spending of these moneys.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. Roy Mason): No public funds have been allocated to the shipbuilding or ship-repairing industries as distinct from assistance for individual firms or organisations within these industries.

Mr. Bishop: Does not my hon. Friend believe that where money is likely to be invested in future we should have adequate control over that spending, particularly in those areas of the shipbuilding industry which are showing signs of failing the nation?

Mr. Mason: Generally speaking, yes, Sir.

East Lothian

Sir W. Anstruther-Gray: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has replied to the letter sent to him on 28th October by East Lothian County Council representing that the western part of the county should be designated a development district; and in what sense.

Mr. Darling: The Board of Trade Controller in Scotland has replied to the Clerk to the County Council's letter to him of 28th October. He has explained that we were unable to list the area as a development district under the Local Employment Acts, but that we will keep its situation under close review.

Sir W. Anstruther-Gray: While thanking the hon. Gentleman for that reply, and the reply which he sent to me, may I ask if he is aware that it was a most unsatisfactory reply? Does he offer the county any hope whatever of attracting new industries to the area? I hope that he will give us the general assurance that he will look into this matter again. Will he please do so urgently?

Mr. Darling: I think that it must be borne in mind, and I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would agree, that this part of Scotland is very fortunate in having such a relatively low rate of unemployment. It is interesting to note that the unemployment rate in the Mussel-burgh and Tranent area, which was over 3 per cent. a year ago, is now down to 2·5 per cent. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will do all that we possibly can to keep the trend in a downward direction.

Emmenogogues

Dr. David Kerr: asked the President of the Board of Trade what quantity of tablets purporting to be emmenogogues was imported in the years 1962, 1963 and 1964, respectively, from other European countries; and what were their value, cost insurance and freight.

Mr. Darling: I regret that these goods cannot be separately distinguished in the trade statistics.

Dr. Kerr: Is my hon. Friend aware that these tablets do not do what they purport to do—[Laughter.] I am sorry, I appreciate the cause of the levity, but this is not a funny matter. These tablets purport to bring on a period in the case of a woman who has missed one and who thinks that she is pregnant. Would my hon. Friend consider excluding these from imports and consult with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, both to refer this to the Consumer Council, because this is a swindle worked on an anxious woman, and also to make sure

that consumers of these goods know what they are buying?

Mr. Darling: I think that there are two issues here. I will certainly take up with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health the first part of my hon. Friend's Question. On the other part, dealing with mis-description of consumer goods, this is a matter that can be dealt with under existing legislation—under the Merchandise Marks Acts—and if details are sent to me by the hon. Member I will look into it.

Shipbuilding Industry

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the President of the Board of Trade what further steps he intends to take towards solving the problems of the shipbuilding industry, pending receipt of the Geddes Report next year.

Mr. Mason: The Government are continuing, in the meantime, to press for improvements in productivity, which will help towards a solution of the problems of the industry, and are taking action to meet other difficulties as they arise.

Mr. Digby: Is the Minister aware that fixed-price contracts have been accepted some way ahead by the industry, based on costs, particularly with regard to labour, that are no longer realistic? Will he keep close watch on the situation?

Mr. Mason: Certainly.

Mr. Bagier: Will the Minister take steps to advise both the management and the trade union side in the industry of the desirability of setting up joint consultation machinery in order to discuss the problems in the industry as a whole?

Mr. Mason: Yes, Sir. I have drawn this to the attention of the national representatives of the unions and to the leaders of the Shipbuilding Employers' Federation.

Industrial Development Certificates (Dorset)

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many industrial development certificates have been applied for in Dorset during the last year, and how many granted.

Mr. Jay: Of the eight applications for industrial development certificates in the County of Dorset—other than Poole—in the last year, seven have been approved and one has been withdrawn.

Mr. Digby: Will the right hon. Gentleman continue to bear in mind the need for light industry in Dorset, despite the needs of other parts of the country?

Mr. Jay: Where suitable applications come forward we shall certainly consider them sympathetically.

North-East

Mr. Rhodes: asked the President of of the Board of Trade if he is satisfied with the number of new jobs brought to the North-East during the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Jay: I am certainly not yet satisfied, but we have been making good progress. Projects covered by industrial development certificates issued in the 12 months to 31st October, 1965, are expected to provide over 23,000 new jobs. We shall continue our efforts to bring more work to the region, and to help the areas affected by pit closures.

Mr. Rhodes: Will by right hon. Friend now repudiate that minority of shortsighted industrialists who are claiming that the area has been over-sold? Is he aware that recently demands to set up new factories in the area have been withdrawn because industrialists have been misled into thinking that there was a shortage of labour?

Mr. Jay: Yes, Sir. We certainly do not take the view that this area has been oversold.

Mr. Derek Page: Is my hon. Friend aware that under the Local Employment Acts as at present drafted, the flow of I.D.Cs. to the North-East draws work away, not only from areas that could well afford it, but from other areas, such as East Anglia and Dorset, which due to their low incomes need factories?

Mr. Jay: I am sure that my hon. Friend knows that we pay regard to the reasonable requirements of all areas.

Mr. Hogg: Can the right hon. Gentleman give us any news on what progress is being made in the proposed new industrial estate in the Tees valley?

Mr. Jay: I opened this a few months ago and it is going ahead very rapidly.

Restaurants, Aberdeen (Completion)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will expedite the work of his advisory committee dealing with the application of Captain John Hay of Aberdeen for a grant to enable him to complete the two restaurants concerning which he has had correspondence from, and interviews with, Captain Hay.

Mr. Darling: The Advisory Committee first considered this application in March, 1964. The Committee required further information but it was not until 25th October, 1965, that the necessary details were received in full. Reports on the application are now being prepared for the Committe's consideration and I hope that a decision will be reached very soon.

Mr. Hughes: While thanking the Minister for the letter which he wrote to me on this subject, may I ask whether he realises that this is very important to the sporting community, who go to Aberdeen in very large numbers, not only in the summer but also in the winter? Will he, therefore, take steps to expedite the work of his Committee?

Mr. Darling: It is for that reason that we are hoping that an early decision can be arrived at.

Exports to United States (Regulations)

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will make a statement on his negotiations with the United States Government to persuade them to drop technical and administrative regulations which militate against British imports, and which reduce and delay the success of the Kennedy Round of tariff reductions.

Mr. Jay: We have made representations to the United States authorities on a number of occasions about various technical and administrative regulations which hamper the export of certain types of British goods to the United States. We have asked in the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations for the removal of the difficulties caused to our trade by these Regulations.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: Would the right hon. Gentleman ask the Prime Minister to press this point when he goes to the United States? The flow of international trade must be to the good of all nations of the free world, and unless these artificial restrictions are lowered and done away with we shall never make progress in this direction.

Mr. Jay: We are pressing this point very strongly through the Kennedy Round negotiations, but we will not neglect any method of making our views known.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: asked the President of the Board of Trade what representations he has made concerning the United States Government's practice of relating duties on organic chemicals not to value but to the United States selling price, contrary to the provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Mr. Jay: We have made representations to the United States authorities over a long period about the effect on British exports of certain benzenoid chemicals of the so-called American selling price system of valuation. In the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations we have placed on record our concern at the damage to our trade caused by this system of valuation, and are pressing for its removal as well as for the full tariff concessions contemplated in the Kennedy Round.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the normal import duty, which may vary between 20 and 40 per cent., is by this practice increased to 100 per cent., and, in certain cases, to 146 per cent.? This is really a punitive import duty and no other country can possibly get over a barrier of this sort. Would the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, strengthen his representations and perhaps consider sanctions, because we cannot go on indefinitely trying to obey the rules ourselves while other great nations use these sorts of malpractices?

Mr. Jay: Yes. We believe that this is an unreasonable practice and we are pressing our views very strongly.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that it is quite unrealistic to expect manufacturers of these and similar materials in this country

to welcome the Kennedy Round and to co-operate in progress towards a 50 per cent. reduction when they face this sort of discrimination in what could be principal markets? Will the right hon. Gentleman press this point a little more strongly?

Mr. Jay: That is why we are raising the so-called non-tariff barriers in the Kennedy Round.

Industrial Development Certificates (Wiltshire)

Mr. Awdry: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many industrial development certificates have been applied for in Wiltshire during the last year; and how many have been granted.

Mr. Jay: Of the 22 applications made during the year ended 31st October, 1965, 18 have been approved, three have been withdrawn and one has been refused.

Mr. Awdry: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that many towns in Wiltshire are largely dependent on one industry? Will it be his policy in future to help new industries to come to these towns?

Mr. Jay: As in the case of Dorset, unemployment in Wiltshire is, happily, very low. In spite of that, we shall consider any project which is suitable for the area.

Industrial Development (Small Firms)

Mr. Tinn: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will instruct his Advisory Committees to be less cautious in considering applications from smaller firms in areas where they are badly needed, such as East Cleveland.

Mr. Jay: No, Sir. I am satisfied that the Advisory Committee's advice and recommendations are fair and reasonable, and in accordance with the objectives of the Local Employment Acts.

Mr. Tinn: Does my right hon. Friend recall that a recent application by a firm which has developed an ironstone mine site at North Skelton was turned down and that the urgency of this matter in my constituency has been increased by the announcement of delay to the projected I.C.I. fibres factory at North Skelton?


Will he see what he can do to encourage to a greater extent the introduction of new industry in East Cleveland?

Mr. Jay: We shall do all we can to encourage the introduction of industry into these areas, but the function of B.O.T.A.C. is to give views not on the distribution of industry policy generally, but on the suitability and viability of particular firms.

Export Services (Scotland)

Mr. G. Campbell: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether there is a branch of the Export Services Department in Scotland.

Mr. Jay: The Board of Trade Office for Scotland is responsible for export promotion work in Scotland. The export section of that office provides a full range of Government services for exporters in the closest collaboration not only with the Export Services Branch but with all other branches of the Board of Trade concerned with export promotion work.

Mr. Campbell: Will the right hon. Gentleman none the less try to make more easily accessible to firms in the north of Scotland, many of which export a large percentage of their production, information and advice on the mechanics of exporting as conditions change?

Mr. Jay: There are about 10 full-time regional export officers in every regional office of the Board of Trade, and they are in direct Telex communication with the Export Services Branch in London. Therefore, the right course for any firm in Scotland is to get directly in touch with the Scottish office of the Board of Trade in Glasgow.

Overseas Trade Fairs

Mr. G. Campbell: asked the President of the Board of Trade if it is his policy to increase United Kingdom participation in trade fairs overseas.

Mr. Jay: Yes, Sir. I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Alan Williams) yesterday.

Mr. Campbell: Does the available evidence show a direct relationship between increased efforts at fairs and exhibitions abroad and improved exports?

Mr. Jay: Yes. There is increasing evidence to this effect, but it is sometimes difficult to judge. We are, however, applying all the tests we can, and so far they are pretty encouraging.

Mr. Snow: Is my right hon. Friend aware that he might well be advised to consider employing a psychologist for these fairs? At the recent successful Tokyo exhibition, the Japanese showed surprise at the exhibition of British bulldogs and Lord Montague's antique cars, which did not illustrate much evidence of British exporting prowess.

Mr. Jay: I did not notice those exhibits, but I did notice the exhibit of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.

Industrial Development (West Durham)

Mr. Armstrong: asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of the pit closures pending in West Durham, if he will establish a trading estate in the area affected.

Mr. Jay: The Board of Trade already owns some 430 acres in West Durham and Aycliffe suitable for industrial development. I shall not hesitate to take the necessary steps to purchase more land should it be needed.

Mr. Armstrong: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask him whether he will bear in mind that, as a result of the announcements last week by the National Coal Board, it is estimated that there will be 8,000 fewer jobs in West Durham? Therefore, the need for a planned industrial estate is more urgent than ever.

Mr. Jay: Yes. But we have already extended the development districts in this area. There are already industrial estates at Aycliffe, Shildon, West Auckland and Team Valley, not far from West Durham. In addition, we are building two advance factories, one of which is in my hon. Friend's constituency.

Advance Factory (Crook)

Mr. Armstrong: asked the President of the Board of Trade when he expects the advance factory at Crook to be completed; and if a suitable tenant, employing male labour, has been selected.

Mr. Jay: The advance factory at Crook is expected to be ready by the end of January and I hope that we shall be able to find a tenant who will provide jobs for men.

Exports

Mr. Peter Walker: asked the President of the Board of Trade what study he has made of the reasons for the 4 per cent. increase in exports during 1964.

Mr. Jay: Our export performance is under continuous study. An analysis of United Kingdom exports in 1964 was given in the Board of Trade Journal of 29th January, 1965; and a review of our exports in 1964 in relation to those of our main competitors will be published in this weeks' issue of the Board of Trade Journal.

Mr. Walker: As a result of the President of the Board of Trade's study, can he tell us whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer was right in column 1277 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of 17th November in saying that our exports were virtually flat in 1964, whether the Government publications were right when they said that there was an increase of 4 per cent., or whether the President of the Board of Trade was right in column 1136 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of 29th November when he said that the increase was 5 per cent.?

Mr. Jay: According to the latest information which has been given to me, the figure is 5 per cent. The interesting point is that the figure was 5 per cent. in 1964, when there was a world trade increase of 15 per cent., whereas this year, with a world trade increase of 7 per cent., our exports have increased by 6½ per cent.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Has the right hon. Gentleman noticed the great increase in industrial costs militating against an increase in exports in 1966?

Mr. Jay: As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are pursuing an incomes and prices policy—I hope with the support of hon. Members opposite.

Advertising and Sales Promotion

Mr. Ioan L. Evans: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will give an estimate of the total expenditure on

advertising in the United Kingdom for 1964 and of the total amount spent in the same year on sales promotions, of all forms, by British firms in overseas markets.

Mr. Darling: I regret that I am not yet in a position to give any estimate for 1964.

Mr. Evans: In view of the fact that the Government hope to solve our balance of payments problem and that next year the payments will be in balance, what is the Department doing to reduce the time, energy and money spent in selling goods in this country and encouraging firms to do more abroad?

Mr. Darling: My right hon. Friend announced yesterday details of a new scheme to encourage firms to make greater use of co-operative schemes for overseas advertising. We think that this will help a great deal. I am not sure that overseas trade promotion would necessarily be encouraged by limiting domestic advertising.

G.A.T.T. (United States Waiver)

27. Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to ratify the proposal for the grant to the United States Government of a waiver to Article I of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in respect of United States imports of motor cars from Canada.

Mr. Jay: The contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade are considering a request from the Government of the United States of America for a waiver from their obligations under Article I of the General Agreement, to enable them to remove their duties on imports of cars from Canada without extending this benefit to imports from any other countries. I am not yet able to say how the United Kingdom Government will vote on the proposed waiver.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: In considering this request, will the President of the Board of Trade bear in mind that the United States have said that it is designed so that there should be no damaging effect on other exporters to the United States? Can he explain how a special


preferential tariff for Canada can possibly have other than damaging effects on others?

Mr. Jay: We have told the United States and, indeed, the Canadian Governments quite frankly that we do not like this arrangement and would much prefer to see the United States remove their tariff on car imports altogether, but I can assure the hon. Member that we shall not accept this arrangement unconditionally.

Lewis's Investment Trust and British Shoe Corporation

Mr. Hamling: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will set up an inquiry under Section 165(b,iii) of the Companies Act, 1948, into the take-over of Lewis's Investment Trust by the British Shoe Corporation, whose members have not been given all the information they might reasonably expect.

Mr. Jay: On the information at present available to me there do not appear to be grounds for appointing an inspector under Section 165(b,iii) of the Companies Act, 1948, to investigate the affairs of British Shoe Corporation Ltd.

Mr. Hamling: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is some disquiet amongst British Shoe Corporation shareholders about the future earning prospects under the new régime and also about their voting rights? Is he also aware that the older employees of Lewis's are most disturbed about their future prospects?

Mr. Jay: I can only say to my hon. Friend that we have no information which would justify us in acting under the Section of the Companies Act which my hon. Friend has mentioned. If he has any such information we shall, of course, be glad to look into it.

37. Mr. Barnett: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will give an assurance that he will not use his powers in the field of monopolies and mergers or under the Companies Act, 1948, to discourage take-overs such as that of Lewis's Investment Trust by the British Shoe Corporation.

Mr. Jay: The Board of Trade will use its powers under the Monopolies and Mergers Act 1965, only where take-overs

appear to be against the public interest. Individual cases are considered on their merits.
The Board has no power under the Companies Act, 1948, to discourage particular take-overs.

Mr. Barnett: While having no particular love for Mr. Clore, may I ask whether my right hon. Friend agrees that it does not help either employees, shareholders or the nation for him to do anything at all which would in any way discourage this sort of take-over of boards of directors who are by any standards inefficient? Will he, therefore, take all possible steps to encourage take-overs of this type of board?

Mr. Jay: In our view, some take-overs are desirable and some are not. That is the policy which we are pursuing.

Mr. Peter Emery: Will the President of the Board of Trade use extreme care in the powers that have been given to him, because the criticism that was made by this side of the House when he made his announcement that this type of merger was likely to cease has proved right in 50 per cent. of the cases dealt with so far?

Mr. Jay: I will certainly take care without accepting all that the hon. Member has said in the last part of his question.

Nuclear Power (Exports)

Mr. Gregory: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps are being taken to promote the exports of British nuclear power, particularly in view of developments of the advanced gas-cooled reactor; and what action he is taking to promote such achievements in countries in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, where there is declared policy for increased energy supply by nuclear means and expansion in industry.

Mr. Jay: All overseas missions, including those in Eastern Europe, have been fully informed of British achievements in nuclear power, particularly the development of the advanced gas-cooled reactor. They are doing all they can to see that these achievements are widely known. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and the United Kingdom manufacturers are also very active in


promoting our exports; and the Board of Trade are doing everything possible to support these efforts.

Mr. Gregory: I am sure that industry will welcome the statement which my right hon. Friend has made, but would he also take into account the export potential to some 10 countries overseas where there is a good grid system and expanding industry and also a high electrical demand where A.G.R. can certainly be of great interest? Furthermore—[HON. MEMBERS: "Too long."]—would he consider sales outlets to a potential 30 countries where the steam generated heavy water reactor could prove of great interest in sizes of, say, 350 to 400 megawatt units? Can my right hon. Friend look at such opportunities and consult the Minister of Technology to see what can be done to promote the sale of hardware and technology?

Mr. Jay: There were prominent exhibits by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at both the Milan and Tokio exhibitions. I can assure my hon. Friend that we are now devising a pavilion of science and technology, which will be a companion to the City of London pavilion, for use at future British fairs and exhibitions overseas.

Princess Margaret (Visit to America)

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the President of the Board of Trade what arrangements were made by him for and during the visit of Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret to the United States of America; and at what cost.

Mr. Jay: None, Sir. Her Royal Highness visited promotions of British goods at shops in New York and Los Angeles, and attended British fashion shows in Los Angeles and San Francisco. These arrangements were not, however, made by my Department, and no costs in connection with Her Royal Highness' visit were incurred by the Board.

Mr. Hamilton: Does that Answer mean that the costs were incurred by other Departments? Can my right hon. Friend say whether there was any initiative on the part of his Department when this trip was first suggested? Or did the initiative come from elsewhere? Can he say what return we are going to get from it—[HON.

MEMBERS: "Oh."]—and will he say whether the Labour Government are going to stop conniving at this kind of extravagant nonsense by this very expensive young lady?

Hon. Members: Shame.

Mr. Jay: My hon. Friend must address questions about other Departments' expenditure to those Departments, but from the reports I have this visit was of assistance to British exports—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—in other parts of the United States, and I can assure my hon. Friend that if he had visited Amsterdam during the British Week, as I did, he would agree with me that Her Royal Highness made an immense contribution.

Mr. Hogg: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that all items of public expenditure are something for which, rightly or wrongly, the Government, and no one else, must take responsibility, and is it not highly unfortunate that backhanded attempts should be made to attack other people who themselves are not responsible for Government expenditure?

Mr. Jay: I think that my hon. Friend is justified in calling any Minister to account for expenditure for which he is responsible, but it so happened that in this case I was not responsible.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Does my right hon. Friend anticipate any increase of exports of Scotch whisky as a result of this, and will they be enough to pay the costs of the "Britannia"?

Mr. Jay: The answer to the first part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question is "Yes", and to the second part of the question, "I do not know."

Boot and Shoe Industry

Mr. Hamling: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will now refer to the Monopolies Commission the monopoly situation existing in the boot and shoe industry, on both the manufacturing and distribution sides.

Mr. Jay: There is no monopoly in the manufacture of boots and shoes. One firm has a large share of retail distribution, but this is not so large as to satisfy the legal conditions for reference to the Monopolies Commission.

Mr. Hamling: Will my right hon. Friend have a look at this again? Is he aware, that, for example, many shoppers visiting shoe shops in various shopping centres of the country fondly imagine they are shopping at different shops, although, in fact, they are not?

Mr. Jay: I have looked at this very carefully, and the fact is that at present the number of shoes sold through British Shoe Corporation shops is less than one-quarter of total sales; therefore, it does not at present come under the legal definition of a monopoly.

International Standards

Sir J. Langford-Holt: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will make it the policy of Her Majesty's Government to ratify all agreements on common international standards which are arrived at by international conferences in which United Kingdom representatives have taken part.

Mr. Darling: The great majority of international standards are recommended by international organisations on which the United Kingdom is represented by the British Standards Institution and not by the Government. The decision on adoption therefore rests with the Institution. In the limited field of intergovernmental agreements on standards, it is Her Majesty's Government's policy to ratify agreements reached by conferences in which the United Kingdom has taken part unless there are strong reasons to the contrary.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this applies to many conventions? We, for example, are in breach of the International Telecommunications Convention, but we are also, I think, the only country in the world to classify bicycles which have 49 c.c. engines as motor bicycles. Is it Government policy to work towards not only ratifying but conformity with the conventions?

Mr. Darling: The first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question should be addressed to the Postmaster-General who is in charge of this field of work. I understand that with regard to motor bicycles we are working very closely indeed with the appropriate international organisations. If there are any

representations which the hon. Member cares to make on that point I shall be very glad to look at them.

Rhodesian Tobacco

Mr. Currie: asked the President of the Board of Trade what stocks of Rhodesian tobacco are at present available in the United Kingdom; and by what date it is anticipated that these stocks will have been exhausted by manufacturers.

Mr. Jay: Stocks of Rhodesian tobacco in the United Kingdom are good for the time of year. When they will be exhausted depends upon the rate at which manufacturers consider it prudent to use them.

Mr. Currie: Does the right hon. Gentleman have consultations with the industry in order that when it becomes necessary to replace stocks with stocks from some other country we shall not have an increase in the price of tobacco to the consuming public?

Mr. Jay: Yes, we are in continuous consultation with the tobacco industry, and that is, indeed, one reason why stocks are so good as they are now.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the President of the Board of Trade when, and in what quantity, he expects a shortfall in normal requirements of Rhodesian tobacco; and whether he will give an assurance that Her Majesty's Government will not allow the United Kingdom's balance of trade with the dollar area to be adversely affected as a result of the cessation of Rhodesian tobacco imports.

Mr. Jay: The 1964–5 crop of Rhodesian tobacco has already been sold, and purchases of the 1965–6 crop would normally begin next spring. Whether there will be a shortfall in Rhodesian supplies next year cannot at present be foreseen. Any transfer of import purchases from one country to another is bound to affect our balance of trade with both countries; but our overall balance of payments is not significantly affected by the source from which we purchase our tobacco requirements.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Rather than add to any adverse balance of trade with the dollar area, will the Government be


considering taking steps to reduce the national consumption of tobacco?

Mr. Jay: We shall take every necessary step to improve our balance of payments. Since, however, the previous Government made sterling convertible, it does not make a great deal of difference whether imports are bought from the dollar area or elsewhere.

Strategic Embargo List

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware of the impediment to Great Britain's export trade provided by the operation of the strategic embargo list; and if he will take immediate steps to remove these restrictions.

Mr. Jay: The purpose of the embargo is to deny to Communist countries goods of atomic, military and strategic value. It is imposed jointly by the N.A.T.O. countries, except Iceland, and by Japan. The list has been considerably shortened in recent years, and it is the Government's policy when it is reviewed each year to reduce it as much as possible consistently with our own and our allies' strategic interests.

Mrs. Short: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in many respects, particularly in engineering and technology, items in which Britain is ahead of America at present are kept on the strategic list to the detriment of our export trade, and in view of my right hon. Friend's very welcome conversion to the need to improve our trade with Eastern Europe, will he stand up to the Americans and end this dictatorship of our export trade?

Mr. Jay: We are now considering a number of suggestions for the removal of items from this list. I am hopeful we shall make progress.

Apples and Pears

Sir H. Harrison: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will reduce the quota for the import of apples and pears in December, January, and February, and give an equivalent increase in March, April, and May.

Mr. Brian Harrison: asked the President of the Board of Trade what action he intends to take to limit imports of apples to ensure that the home producer

has a fair and reasonable opportunity to compete in the pre-Christmas market.

Mr. Jay: I would refer the hon. Members to the Answer my hon. Friend gave to the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior) on 25th November.

Sir H. Harrison: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the producing of apples and pears is a very long-term process, and that many producers are now getting a very small return and that if they do not get help they may opt out, so that housewives will be at the mercy of the foreign exporters?

Mr. Jay: I am aware of that, but we do not see a case at present for increasing the severity of these restrictions on imports.

North-East Scotland

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the President of the Board of Trade what are his further short-and long-term plans for increasing trade and industry in northeast Scotland.

Mr. Jay: My aims for north-east Scotland continue to be the active encouragement of trade and industry by making full use in the development districts there of my powers under the Local Employment Acts to assist the establishment of new industries and the expansion of those already existing.

Mr. Hughes: In thanking my right hon. Friend for his successful efforts and visits to Aberdeen, may I ask him to particularise the factories which he has in mind and the trades which fall within his immediate plan?

Mr. Jay: As my hon. and learned Friend knows, we are proposing to build a new advance factory in Aberdeen. I am glad to say that under the present Government, unemployment in Aberdeen, as in most parts of the country, has fallen during the past year.

Textiles (Imports from Hong Kong)

Mr. Dance: asked the President of the Board of Trade when he will announce details of the textiles imports quota from Hong Kong which is due to come into force in 1966.

Mr. Jay: I have agreed that Hong Kong may after 1st January export up to half the quota which I have proposed for her in 1966. This will keep trade moving while international discussions are proceeding on my proposals as a whole.

Mr. Dance: Will the President of the Board of Trade give a positive assurance that this loyal and tremendously efficient Colony will not get another kick in the teeth such as he gave it recently on the carry-over question?

Mr. Jay: Obviously, the hon. Member is badly informed on this matter.

Mr. Fisher: Will the President of the Board of Trade nevertheless recognise that Hong Kong, being a Colonial Dependency and, therefore, relying entirely on us in the Geneva negotiations, should be represented effectively and that her interests, which are vital to her continuing prosperity, should be specially the care of the right hon. Gentleman?

Mr. Jay: Yes, certainly, we recognise a special obligation to Hong Kong. That is why we are offering a quota which is based on the previous figure but will allow for growth year by year.

Mr. Blackburn: Will my right hon. Friend also bear in mind that the home industry has its case, too?

Mr. Jay: Yes, Sir.

Chicken Meat (Import from Denmark)

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: asked the President of the Board of Trade what action he proposes to take under anti-dumping legislation regarding the import of poultry meat from Denmark.

Mr. Jay: The National Farmers' Unions and the National Association of Poultry Packers have applied for antidumping action in respect of imports of chicken meat from Denmark. As the applicants have been informed, the Board of Trade has completed its investigations and is discussing with the Danish authorities the possibilities of a satisfactory solution.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Does the President of the Board of Trade realise that the

longer these discussions continue, the worse the position goes? Will he make it his special care to try to get a decision as quickly as possible to protect this industry?

Mr. Jay: I made this perfectly clear to the Danish authorities in Copenhagen at the recent E.F.T.A. meeting.

Advance Factory (Camelford)

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has yet found a tenant for the advance factory built this year at Camelford, Cornwall.

Mr. Jay: No, Sir. This factory is expected to be ready for occupation next summer. We are endeavouring to find a suitable tenant.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONALISED INDUSTRIES

Sir R. Nugent: asked the Prime Minister whether he will consider appointing a Minister for Nationalised Industries with special responsibilities for increasing their industrial strength and reducing their dependence on the taxpayer.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): No, Sir, no such Minister is necessary.

Sir R. Nugent: Is the Prime Minister aware of the serious concern at the growing interference by Ministers in the commercial policy of nationalised industries for political reasons? Es he aware that this reverses the policy of greater autonomy which was established in 1961 and seriously undermines the successful management of these industries?

The Prime Minister: I am aware that we are always being pressed from the opposite side of the House to interfere still more with them. I am also aware that under the Conservative Government, a Secretary of State for the nationalised industries was appointed and it was an unmitigated disaster. I am also aware that the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries, presided over with such distinction by the right hon. Member, never made this recommendation.

Oral Answers to Questions — RHODESIA

Mr. Murray: asked the Prime Minister whether he will seek to arrange a special conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers, in view of the Rhodesian situation.

The Prime Minister: There are no present plans for such a meeting.

Mr. Murray: In thanking my right hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask whether he does not think that in the present serious circumstances, with the grave threat to Commonwealth unity, he might consider, if not a full conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers, meeting some of the African Commonwealth Prime Ministers, if necessary at somewhere like Nairobi?

The Prime Minister: This has, of course, been considered, but we are in close touch with other Commonwealth Heads of Government. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations is in Lusaka and hopes to have the opportunity to meet other African leaders on his way back from Lusaka.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Does not the proposal that Sir Robert Menzies should visit Rhodesia show that the Prime Minister fully realises that Commonwealth statesmen can play a part in this situation? Despite his reply, will the Prime Minister still consider the possibility that at the right moment Commonwealth statesmen, whether Privy Councillors or some other suitable delegation, should go to Rhodesia to see what common grounds can be found?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir, I feel that the Commonwealth has a special responsibility here. As the Leader of the Opposition said last week, our aim must be to get Rhodesia not only constitutionally but fully established within the Commonwealth. I am, however, bound to say that all my efforts last year to get the situation handled on a Commonwealth basis were rejected by the then Rhodesian Government. Mr. Smith would not agree to a Commonwealth mission. He would not agree at any point to a mission of Commonwealth Privy Councillors. He flatly rejected every proposal for a mission of Privy

Councillors, even from the British House of Commons.

Mr. Heath: As, I think the Prime Minister will agree, Mr. Smith agreed that Sir Robert Menzies should go to Rhodesia, could he not pursue the matter further by suggesting that Sir Robert Menzies might approach both President Kaunda and Mr. Smith to see whether it is possible for any arrangement to be made for safeguarding Kariba which would be satisfactory to both?

The Prime Minister: Sir Robert Menzies was not willing to go to Rhodesia on his own as a special guest of the then Rhodesian Government. He was prepared to head a delegation of Commonwealth Prime Ministers. I think that he is rather too senior a Commonwealth Prime Minister to be told whom he can and cannot take with him if he goes to Rhodesia. I hope that the Leader of the Opposition is not now suggesting that one of the most senior Commonwealth Prime Ministers should enter into negotiations with Mr. Smith.

Mr. Heath: What I am suggesting is that if there are genuine doubts in the minds of the Prime Minister and of President Kaunda about the safety of Kariba, even after the assurances given by Mr. Smith in writing to President Kaunda on 22nd October, it is better to try to get a solution of this kind through a Commonwealth country rather than take unnecessary risks.

The Prime Minister: We shall do anything within our power to ensure that no risks are taken with Kariba. If there is any possibility of a Commonwealth mission going to Rhodesia to talk to the legal Government of Rhodesia, and to anyone whom they think would help, that is a different matter. I should not, however, want to suggest to Sir Robert Menzies that he should enter into negotiations with illegal authorities.

Sir Richard Glyn: asked the Prime Minister what criteria he employed in selecting documents for inclusion in Command Paper No. 2807; and if he will place in the Library copies of all official documents mentioned in that Paper but not printed in it.

The Prime Minister: The test of direct relevance to the negotiations, Sir. I will


however consider whether any or all of the other documents mentioned, but not published, in Command 2807 might not also be made available to the House.

Sir Richard Glyn: Will the Prime Minister agree that a practical step towards resolving the Rhodesian tragedy would be for him to publish in the Library the full text of his letter to Mr. Mutasa, which is referred to repeatedly in Command 2807? Is he aware that many Rhodesians believe sincerely that in this letter he gave a firm pledge to coloured Rhodesians never to grant independence to the late Smith Government in any circumstances, and for that reason some of them believe that the negotiations on this side were not conducted fully and in good faith? Will he allay that belief by publishing the full text of the letter?

The Prime Minister: I will certainly consider that. I am not aware that Mr. Smith or anyone else in Rhodesia had the suspicion mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. Mr. Smith repeatedly said that I was negotiating in good faith, as I understood him to be doing. I have made crystal clear many times, not only to those with whom I was negotiating but in my national speech in Rhodesia to the Press and television, exactly what our position was about independence and about majority rule.

Mr. Wall: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on oil sanctions against Southern Africa.

The Prime Minister: I have nothing to add to my statement of 23rd November.

Mr. Wall: Would not the Prime Minister agree that oil sanctions could be effective only if imposed on the whole of Southern Africa, and would he not further agree that this flight of fancy would be more logical than the mean and inhuman act in cutting off pensions to those who spent their lives in the service of the State merely because they live in Rhodesia?

The Prime Minister: The difficulties of oil sanctions I have admitted very plainly to the House. We are certainly not rushing into this thing until we are satisfied about their effectiveness as well as fairness. Since the hon. Gentleman has mentioned pensions, the position is that we are at the present time going into the question of what action can be

taken where humanitarian considerations are involved and where there is hardship caused, so that those concerned can get an advance on pensions being held in their names.

Mr. Michael Foot: Can the Prime Minister indicate to the House when the study of the feasibility of oil sanctions will be complete and when he thinks that he will be able to make a statement to the House about it?

The Prime Minister: It is difficult to put a date on this. There are a number of countries involved. As I said yesterday, I suggest that it is not only a question of the supplying countries, nor again countries who are responsible for prominent oil supplying companies and also the countries responsible for the ships. There are very great complications and, so far as that is concerned, I do not know how long it will take.

Mr. Heath: Is the Prime Minister aware that the statement he has just made about payment of pensions in Rhodesia is entirely contrary to the statement that he made yesterday and contrary to what the Financial Secretary, I understand, said last night? Is the Prime Minister aware that we welcome this change, but why is it necessary to issue a statement as horrible as yesterday afternoon's——

Mr. William Hamilton: On a point of order—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am being addressed on a point of order.

Mr. Hamilton: Surely the Question we are now discussing relates to oil sanctions against South Africa? The question of pensions seems to me to be entirely out of order.

Mr. Speaker: I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman has said anything out of order yet.

Mr. Heath: rose——

Mr. Rankin: On a point of order. Is my right hon. Friend answering with this Question the Question which stands in my name, No. 14?

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order.

Mr. Rankin: It deals with pensions——

An Hon. Member: This one does not.

Mr. Heath: Why was it necessary for the Prime Minister to make his statement yesterday, which he skipped over without giving the full implications to the House, and then withdraw it today?

The Prime Minister: I am withdrawing nothing and I skipped over nothing—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] If the right hon. Gentleman could not understand what I was saying yesterday, that was his fault. Details have been published and the right hon. Gentleman, who all the time is trying to find some point of difference—[Interruption.]—and has been doing so ever since he came under attack from Lord Salisbury at Brighton, had better decide—does he support the policy of the Government? If not, let him put down a Motion of censure, provided that he is prepared to abide by the consequences.

Mr. Heath: Is the Prime Minister aware that, from the Front Bench on this side of the House, we have given him general support throughout the negotiations and the policy which was carried out? This does not preclude the Opposition from rightful grounds of criticism such as his statement yesterday, which disguised the fact that pensions would not be paid and which he is now withdrawing.

The Prime Minister: My statement yesterday referred to remittances—all remittances. My statement today—[Interruption.]—the right hon. Gentleman was rightly very concerned with other things yesterday and he directed his attention to them. He said that he would want time to study the economic and financial measures. We understood that and were ready for him to come back on this point. I said that it was fair that there should be two points of view about it. We have been concerned all along not to go on supplying sterling to the Smith régime and this is what we are stopping, but if there are humanitarian cases of hardship, we are trying to work out whether, through the mechanism of the Government of Rhodesia—the Governor—or in other ways, we can provide financial assistance in those cases.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am beginning to think that the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. William Hamilton) was right——

Mr. William Hamilton: That is right.

Mr. Speaker: Order. —that even the protagonists in this duel must not stretch the rules of order and develop a reference to pensions in a supplementary to a Question on oil. They must find other opportunities of debating pensions.

Mr. Orme: Would my right hon. Friend bear in mind that when oil sanctions are applied against Rhodesia, they will have the unanimous support of these benches and if, by the implementation of oil sanctions, it means an embargo and a blockade of the ports, that, too, will get our support? Has the Prime Minister noted the report this morning about the French position on oil and would he make a statement about that?

The Prime Minister: The unanimous support from these benches will not include me until I am satisfied that such an oil sanction is workable and would be effective.

Mr. Speaker: Now that we have got back to oil, we can end the Prime Minister's Questions.

Oral Answers to Questions — NUCLEAR TESTS

Mr. Blaker: asked the Prime Minister what plans he has for carrying out further nuclear test explosions.

The Prime Minister: None, Sir, for the immediate future.

Mr. Blaker: Will the Prime Minister give an assurance that if and when he carries out future tests, he will announce them at the time they occur? Is it not a fact that the last test which he carried out was at least as big as the bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima? Why did he conceal if from the country for 10 weeks after it had taken place?

The Prime Minister: I announced it in the House when the House resumed. This test was at least as big as the one carried out by the previous Government a year ago which did not go off. I have explained to the House the circumstances in which it was carried out.

Mr. Heath: In view of the fact that the previous Administration always announced tests in advance and immediately that they had been held and were always


pressed to do so by the right hon. Gentleman and his friends, why did the Prime Minister not return to that practice and give proper notice and announce when it was being held, especially when he says that it was successful? Why did he delay the announcement until he was asked a Question? Was it in order to avoid it coming out at the Labour Party Conference?

The Prime Minister: I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I was not as sensitive about my party conference as he was about his. I would further assure the right hon. Gentleman that I did not stop my party conference reaching decisions on every issue before it. These things were pat to the vote, and were encouraged to be put to the vote. So far as the test is concerned, I announced it to the House.

Mr. Speaker: Even the Prime Minister must not make such long supplementary answers.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNITED NATIONS ORGANISATION (PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT)

Mr. Ioan L. Evans: asked the Prime Minister what plans he has for visiting the United Nations Organisation and participating in the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Prime Minister: I shall be visiting the United States later this month and hope to address the General Assembly of the United Nations on 16th December.

Mr. Evans: I should like to thank my right hon. Friend for that encouraging reply. Will he stress to the General Assembly the wholehearted support of the people of this country for the work of the United Nations, will he make a plea for a political settlement in Vietnam, and will he continue with his efforts to bring about a non-proliferation pact to remove the fears of nuclear warfare from the people of the world?

The Prime Minister: I will bear all those things in mind when I start to prepare the speech; and I will consider whether to tell the United Nations that hon. Gentlemen opposite no less than those on this side are as keen that the Prime Minister of this country should address the United Nations as they were

when Mr. Macmillan addressed it not long ago.

Mr. Longden: Will the Prime Minister, when he addresses the General Assembly, make it clear that the aims of the United Nations differ not only from those of Rhodesia, which can be summarised as being permanent or at any rate indefinite white supremacy, but also from the aims of this country, which can be summarised as being gradual majority rule, whereas the aims of the United Nations are majority rule tomorrow? Will he instruct our representative not to vote for resolutions which have that as their objective?

The Prime Minister: If I catch the eye of the President of the Assembly I shall of course express the views of this country on this matter, not the views of Rhodesia, nor the views of certain other members of the United Nations. On this point, we have made it clear that there will have to be a period of multi-racial partnership before there can be independence or majority rule.

Mr. Heath: Will the Prime Minister in his address also tell the United Nations what the Government are prepared to do in order to encourage the Trade and Aid Board set up as a result of U.N.C.T.A.D. at Geneva, to which the Government have so far given absolutely no encouragement?

The Prime Minister: I certainly do not accept the last few words of the right hon. Gentleman's question. We have given a great deal of encouragement to this body, and I will certainly be prepared to say a few words about the encouragement that we have given when I address the United Nations.

Oral Answers to Questions — VIETNAM

Q.5. Mr. Hugh Jenkins: asked the Prime Minister if, in view of recent official statements by the United States Government concerning their policy on Vietnam, he will give an assurance that Her Majesty's Government's policy is still to strive for peace negotiations; and if he will make a statement.

Q.7. Mr. Heffer: asked the Prime Minister if, in pursuance of Her Majesty's Government's initiative to seek peace in


Vietnam, he will seek to hold consultations with President Johnson on the peace overtures by the North Vietnam Government; and if he will make a statement.

The Prime Minister: It is our policy still to strive for peace negotiations. I shall be discussing with President Johnson all aspects of the Vietnam situation.

Mr. Jenkins: Has my right hon. Friend noted the statement attributed to the American Secretary of State recently in which he said that the United States may, under certain circumstances, be prepared to discontinue the air bombardment of Vietnam? Does he agree that this air bombardment is a major cause of the lack of reaching peace negotiations, and will he press this matter with the President of the United States?

The Prime Minister: The statement of the Secretary of State came as less of a surprise to me than I think it did to my hon. Friend. So far as the air bombardment is concerned and the correlated question of infiltration from North Vietnam, I do not think that I need say more than was said in June on both points in the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' communiqué, and—I add this at the risk of bringing up a sensitive subject again—it was endorsed unanimously by the Labour Party Conference.

Mr. Heffer: In view of the fact that yesterday Mr. Gromyko also made a speech in which he emphasised that a precondition of negotiations was the ending of bombing, and also Mr. Dean Rusk yesterday made a similar statement, is not this an opportunity now, before the Prime Minister goes to meet President Johnson, to raise the matter again urgently with the American Government?

The Prime Minister: I think that the whole House agrees, because it has been said from both sides, that obviously the most helpful development would be initiative by the two co-Chairmen under the Geneva Agreement. That is what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is discussing this week with the Soviet Government. Although they have put it negatively that they cannot have a conference unless the bombing stops, what we have not had is a statement that they will call a conference if the bombing stops.

Mr. Heffer: asked the Prime Minister if in pursuance of Her Majesty's Government's initiative to seek peace in Vietnam, Her Majesty's Government will seek to hold consultations with the Roumanian Government concerning a peaceful settlement in Vietnam; and if he will make a statement.

The Prime Minister: My information is that the Roumanian Government are not interested in the rôle of mediator.

Mr. Heffer: That is not my information. In view of the fact that Roumania has kept good relations with China as well as with the Soviet Union, would not this be a good channel in order to get China's interest in the question of negotiation?

The Prime Minister: Because of our concern that anyone who might be able to act as a mediator should be able to do so, we made specific inquiries of the Roumanian Government, but I am sorry to say that we were told that they were not concerned to act in this rôle.

ZAMBIA (BRITISH FORCES)

The following Questions stood upon the Order Paper:

Q12. Mr. WILL GRIFFITHS: To ask the Prime Minister, what reply he has sent to the President of Zambia's request for the stationing of British military forces in Zambia.

Q13. Mr. WILLIAM HAMILTON: To ask the Prime Minister, what plans have been made to send British troops to the protection of Zambia.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): With permission, I will now answer Questions No. 12 and 13 together.
I have just heard since I came into the Chamber from my right hon. Friend the Commonwealth Secretary that the Government of Zambia have asked the British Government to provide Royal Air Force planes for the defence of Zambia. The British Government have readily agreed to meet this request; discussions about ground troops are still continuing.

Mr. Griffiths: Could the Prime Minister say whether the differences which have occurred up to now have been about


the scale of the forces to be supplied to Zambia or about their deployment or both?

The Prime Minister: This message came very quickly. I was on the phone to my right hon. Friend an hour ago: I must say that communications are still very difficult. The differences have been of a rather more general character. I indicated their nature yesterday. But I understand from my right hon. Friend that agreement has now been reached on all the terms and conditions relating to the stationing of the Royal Air Force planes and R.A.F. Regiment in Zambia. There is now nothing to stop the immediate entry of the planes into Zambia.

Mr. Hamilton: Can my right hon. Friend deny or confirm reports that the Egyptian Government are refusing flyover rights over Egyptian territory for our planes? Can he say whether any assurance was sought or given about the deployment of other foreign forces in Zambia?

The Prime Minister: On the question of the Egyptian fly-over rights, there have been difficulties. The reasons given for unwillingness on their part to make available what we hoped would have been the normal rights which we could have expected was one of the reasons which filled me and others with such anxiety about the developing situation in Zambia. With regard to the question of forces, I understand from my right hon. Friend that the conditions about the operations of the R.A.F. there—obviously, we must have adequate operational control—have been met. However, so far as ground forces are concerned, discussions are still proceeding with my right hon. Friend, advised, of course, by the Director of Military Operations from the Army Department of the Ministry of Defence.

Mr. Heath: Can the right hon. Gentleman outline as soon as possible, if he does not have the information now, the precise arrangements under which the Royal Air Force and the R.A.F. Regiment will be in Zambia?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for the fact that it was not possible to give him information. I tried to get a message to him that, with luck, I hoped to make a statement at 3.30 p.m.,

but I did not get this information until 3.25 p.m. I should like, in any way convenient to the House, to give full particulars. Certainly, as soon as I get the text—it is probably available in some form—I will let the right hon. Gentleman have it and find some means of informing the House.

Mr. Molloy: In future and, I hope, in immediate communications with President Kaunda, would my right hon. Friend express to him the appreciation of the House for his, President Kaunda's, patience and great statesmanship?

The Prime Minister: I have reason to think that President Kaunda was aware of what was said by both sides of the House on this question yesterday. I have reason to think that he already knows, and I think that it would be right to draw to his attention that, whatever differences we have had this afternoon or at any other time about certain aspects of the Rhodesian situation, there has been full support given from both sides of the House for the need for British forces to be stationed in Zambia on the grounds that we have stated, following the request of the President.

Mr. Hastings: Is the Prime Minister not just as well aware as most of the rest of us that there is no air threat whatever to Zambia and no threat to the Kariba Dam? Why does he go on pretending in the House and on television that there is?

The Prime Minister: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is speaking for himself here, because we have our own duties and responsibilities, or whether he is speaking with any inner knowledge of this matter. As long as there is any possibility or any fear of this happening, we have certain duties in this matter. We have carried out these duties, and we shall carry them out.

Mr. David Steel: While discussions are still going on, can the Prime Minister confirm that Her Majesty's Government have no objection in principle to the stationing of ground troops in Zambia? Secondly, bearing in mind his statement yesterday about not standing idly by in the event of interference with power supplies, can he continue to rebut any statement which may be made in this


House or elsewhere which might embolden Mr. Smith and his régime to believe that they can carry out such action with impunity?

The Prime Minister: When the hon. Gentleman asks whether I can say that there is no objection in principle to the stationing of ground troops, I take it that he means British troops. Certainly there is no objection. The matter is being discussed at present by my right hon. Friend. We are perfectly willing to station ground troops provided satisfactory conditions obtain. As for the other matter, it is difficult to go into detail on how effect will be given to what I said yesterday. It would be extremely unfair for all concerned if I tried to do so, but I repeat what I said yesterday, and if necessary I will confirm his phrase about impunity.

Mr. Ennals: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the relief that will be felt throughout the country at the announcement that he has just made concerning the agreement reached between the two countries and the much more dangerous consequences which may have been averted by this agreement? Does he also agree that had it not been for the firm position he took yesterday such an agreement would not have been possible?

The Prime Minister: I think that the whole House agreed yesterday that we were facing—and I think it will agree that we are still facing—a very critical situation in Central Africa, and that we want to do everything in our power to stop this already explosive situation becoming still more explosive. I believe that the presence of the Royal Air Force will be an important factor in helping to cool down the situation. As to whether the things I said yesterday have helped to secure this agreement, that is a matter on which there can only be opinions and judgments, and nothing can be certain.

Sir P. Agnew: When the R.A.F. have arrived in Zambia, will they be put under the operational control of the Commander-in-Chief, Middle East, or under whose command will they be placed?

The Prime Minister: Referring to the Royal Air Force unit, a senior Royal Air Force officer is already there, in

command of operations locally. The forces will be under the general control of the Commander-in-Chief, Middle East. The question of the command structure and control of the Army unit, if it goes out, is still being worked out, but it will be completely under British control.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Heath: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Bowden): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 6TH DECEMBER—Second Reading of the Rating Bill, and the remaining stages of the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Bill.
TUESDAY, 7TH DECEMBER—Supply (1st Allotted Day): Motion to move Mr. Speaker out of the Chair when a debate will arise on an Amendment to take note of the First, Second and Third Reports from the Committee of Public Accounts in Session 1964–65.
Motions on the County Courts Jurisdiction Order, the Huntingdon and Peterborough (Amendment) Order, and on the Rating of Industry (Scotland) Order.
WEDNESDAY, 8TH DECEMBER—Second Reading of the Building Control Bill.
THURSDAY, 9TH DECEMBER—Supply (2nd Allotted Day): Motion to move Mr. Speaker out of the Chair when a debate will arise on an Amendment to take note of the 1964–65 Report and the Second Special Report from the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries relating to London Transport.
FRIDAY, 10TH DECEMBER—Private Members' Motions.
MONDAY, 13TH DECEMBER—The Business proposed is Supply (3rd Allotted Day): Motion to move Mr. Speaker out of the Chair when a debate will arise on an Opposition Amendment on a subject to be announced.

Mr. Heath: Can the Leader of the House tell us whether he can yet propose a date for the foreign affairs debate?

Mr. Bowden: I cannot be absolutely firm about the date, but it will be on the return of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister from Washington—probably in the last week before the Christmas Recess.

Mr. Turton: Can the Leader of the House say when the House will have an opportunity of discussing the very stringent economic and financial sanctions passed last night, particularly the very mean one against pensioners?

Mr. Bowden: Such proposals as will need Orders in Council will come before the House in the normal way. The House must take normal opportunities to debate other proposals, either on the Adjournment or, if the Opposition wish, by means of their request for a debate.

Mr. Edelman: Can my right hon. Friend say when the Plowden Report will be presented to the House and debated?

Mr. Bowden: Certainly before Christmas, but I cannot firmly say that it will be next week.

Mr. Warbey: If the Leader of the House has not been able to take account of the views expressed last week that we should have a debate, at least on Vietnam, before the Prime Minister goes to Washington, will he at least make arrangements to provide time to discuss the Motion standing in my name on today's Order Paper for a Select Committee of Inquiry into the reasons for the breakdown in the peace negotiations over Vietnam?

[That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the circumstances which caused Her Majesty's Ministers to be misled into informing the House and the British public that the Governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and of the Chinese People's Republic were solely responsible for the breakdown of all the efforts, during 1964 and 1965, to bring about negotiations for a settlement of the conflict in Vietnam.]

Mr. Bowden: The proposals contained in my hon. Friend's Motion could easily be discussed during the two days that are being set aside for the debate on foreign affairs. I cannot provide any additional time. To correct what may be misunderstood in connection with my reply

to an earlier question from my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman), I should say that the White Paper will be available before Christmas, but I cannot promise a debate on the Plowden Report before Christmas.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must ask hon. Members not to conduct conversations in the House, or not to remain in the Chamber if they must do so. Business Question Time is an important part of the proceedings.

Mr. Farr: Will the right hon. Gentleman provide time for the House to continue the discussion of the Order in relation to industrial development certificates, which was adjourned last night until another time?

Mr. Bowden: It is on the Order Paper today, and I hope that there will be time tonight for it to be discussed before 11.30 p.m.

Mr. Lipton: Has my right hon. Friend taken note of my Motion on the Order Paper referring to tied houses?

[That this House, in view of the growing extent to which the tied house principle is being applied to on-licences and off-licences, consequently denying freedom of choice to the consumer, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to refer the matter to the Monopolies Commission.]

Can my right hon. Friend say whether the Government accept that Motion? If they do it will be necessary to find time to debate it.

Mr. Bowden: I cannot find time anyhow, but I should think that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will have noted the Motion on the Order Paper. If he has not, I will certainly draw it to his attention.

Mr. Peter Emery: May I pursue the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr). It appears from today's business that it is extremely likely that the Prayer dealing with I.D.C.s will be squeezed out tonight. Will the Leader of the House say that it will be his practice, as it has been the practice in the past to try to find time to discuss Orders which have been squeezed out in this manner, especially since many hon. Members on both sides of the House wish to speak on this Order?

Mr. Bowden: I still hope that there will be time to discuss it tonight. If there is not, I will certainly do what is usual in these circumstances and try to provide time.

Mr. Bryan: As the Postmaster-General has dodged Oral Questions by giving a Written Answer to a planted Question in order to announce a major reversal of his television policy, can we have a debate on this subject early next week or the week after, so that we may have an opportunity properly to question the right hon. Gentleman?

Mr. Sydney Silverman: On a point of Order. Is it within the rules of order of this House for an hon. Member to accuse a Minister of having dodged something? Is he not implying that my right hon. Friend took an initiative outside the rules of the House in order not to carry out a duty imposed upon him by those rules?

Mr. Speaker: I think that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) is becoming a little sensitive about the kind of controversy that takes place in the House. I have not heard anything out of order up till now.

Mr. Bowden: I cannot accept for a moment that any of my right hon. Friends would dodge anything at any time. In addition to that, I have nothing to add to the reply given by the Postmaster-General yesterday.

Mrs. Anne Kerr: Has my right hon. Friend come to a final decision about the timing of the foreign affairs debate? Together with many other hon. Members on both sides of the House, I feel that there should be a debate before the Prime Minister goes to Washington. May I urge my right hon. Friend to reconsider his decision about this key foreign affairs debate?

Mr. Bowden: No, Sir. From the information that I have it is the general wish of the House—I do not say it is the unanimous wish—that my right hon. Friend should return from Washington and report to this House, and that we should have a debate at that point.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: Is the Leader of the House aware that from the way in which decisions are announced in this

House we get the impression that the Minister of Aviation, the Minister of Technology and the Postmaster-General are frightened of the House? If in one year he is not able to change the policy on decisions, will he at least change these Ministers?

Mr. Bowden: I cannot accept for one moment that any of my right hon. Friends is afraid of the House; nor is it my responsibility to change Ministers.

Mr. George Y. Mackie: On Monday last, the Secretary of State for Scotland made an important announcement about the abandonment of certain hydro-electric projects in the Highlands. Such projects have long been important Government policy for the Highlands, and as we only got the report on these projects that day, while the right hon. Gentleman was announcing his decision, can time be provided for this important change in policy to be discussed by this House, or by the Scottish Grand Committee?

Mr. Bowden: I agree that this is an important matter. I cannot provide Government time between now and the Christmas Recess, but there will be opportunities on the day set aside for Christmas Adjournment debates when this subject might well be raised.

Dr. David Kerr: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the widespread disquiet there is over the continued failure to deal with the problem of sick Members, and will he provide an early opportunity for us to discuss the Report on the Select Committee on Procedure in regard to proxy voting?

Mr. Bowden: On the first point, this is a matter for the Services Committee of the House of Commons, which, I hope, will be set up very quickly. On the question of proxy voting, there has been no decision yet to debate the Report on the Select Committee on Procedure.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: In view of the latest measures against Rhodesia, which to many of us seem punitive—contrary to the Prime Minister's assurance that he would not introduce such measures—will the Government give time for discussion of those measures which do not form the subject of Orders in Council? And will he not agree that it is not fair to place the onus on the Opposition?

Mr. Bowden: I think that it is for the Government to find time for Orders in Council which require action in this House. If there are any other matters contained in the report made yesterday by my right hon. Friend, or in the statement made during the speech of my hon. Friend, I am sure that it is a matter for the Opposition to decide whether they want to select one or all of those matters for discussion.

Mr. Ioan L. Evans: May I ask whether my right hon. Friend is giving consideration to the question of holding morning sittings? In view of the heavy legislative programme and the desire for debates on various topics, would it not be more efficient to sit from 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock in the morning until 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., rather than to meet at 2.30 p.m. and finish at 2 o'clock the following morning?

Mr. Bowden: The question of morning sittings is still before the Select Committee or Procedure, but I would remind the House that, as Leader of the House —and as long as I am Leader of the House—I must take into consideration that even if it were the desire of the House to finish at 7 p.m. there must be occasions when I would wish to suspend the rule so that we could continue until 11 o'clock or midnight.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Will the Leader of the House treat the way in which the Postmaster-General announced the new policy on colour television in a more serious wav? Will he accept from us that we would like a debate on this matter? Has the manner in which the statement was made any connection with the remarks made by the Postmaster-General at Aberdeen that he realised that it was a handicap to have to answer to Parliament on Post Office affairs——

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot argue in detail the merits of the subject for which the hon. Member asks a debate.

Mr. Bowden: I will treat a serious question in a serious way, but I did not get a serious question previously. If the hon. Member feels that the question of colour television should be debated, he can probably discuss it with his right hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench through the usual channels, when

we can see what can be arranged. But I cannot promise Government time for such discussion.

Mr. English: Will my right hon. Friend provide some time to debate the Motion on the Order Paper, signed by 23 hon. Members and myself, on the decision of the Newspaper Proprietors' Association? Is he aware that, to my knowledge, only one of the Sunday newspapers has so far published any of the reasons for that decision, and even that newspaper has not published all of them; and that unless the decision is debated here, the media of communication in this respect are blocked because of the newspaper proprietors' self-interest?

[That this House takes note of the recent decision of the Newspaper Propritors' Association to publish no newspapers on Boxing Day 1965, deplores the fact that such a decision has been made as a cartel decision rather than left to the discretion of individual companies in free competition, further deplores the fact that a decision of such public interest can be taken in secret and should remain unpublicised by the Press, and accordingly askes Her Majesty's Government to institute an inquiry into the causes of this decision and the methods whereby it was taken.]

Mr. Bowden: I am afraid that I cannot promise time.

Mr. Heath: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the real question worrying my hon. Friends is the fact that yesterday and the day before we had two major statements of policy announced by way of Written Answers: the first on the change in policy on television, and the second on the scope of the Ministry of Technology's Department? Will not the right hon. Gentleman kindly look at them carefully, because these are major items that should be announced by Oral Questions so that Ministers can be cross-questioned?

Mr. Bowden: I am perfectly prepared to look at the two points raised by the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Costain: Does the Leader of the House appreciate that the two Bills for Second Reading next week have been put down very shortly after their publication —ten days in the case of the Rating Bill,


and seven days in the case of the Building Control Bill? Will he assure the House that this will not be normal practice, but that proper time will be allowed before the Committee stage so that properly thought out Amendments can be put down?

Mr. Bowden: On the contrary, it is normal practice. Ten days is about the usual period. Ten days will have elapsed before we commence on the Committee stage of the Rating Bil, which, I am sure, the whole House wants urgently.

Mr. Raphael Tuck: Would my right hon. Friend promise us a debate on aircraft some time before the Minister decides whether to support the British Super VC.10, or go all-American and purchase the Boeing?

Mr. Bowden: A great deal of this is hypothetical. I would be quite prepared to discuss the matter with my right hon. Friend the Minister, but I cannot, at the moment, make any firm statement.

Mr. Lubbock: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that under the Pensions (Increase) Bill we are not permitted to discuss pension increases for many groups of persons, such as members of the Armed Forces and Post Office workers? Will he find time before the Christmas Recess for a debate on the subject that is vitally important to many thousands of people.

Mr. Bowden: It is quite true to say that there is no need, in a sense, to debate the Royal Warrant, because no action is required by this House, but I have noted that on previous occasions—for instance, in 1962—a short debate of about one hour has taken place. We might look at the possibility of doing this one night.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Will the right hon. Gentleman do what he can to get us a debate on a military aircraft procurement before the Prime Minister goes to America, where he will undoubtedly be subject to very heavy pressure to announce an order for the Fl11? It is therefore very important that a military equipment procurement should be debated in this House before the Prime Minister goes to America.

Mr. Bowden: I cannot give that sort of assurance at this stage.

Mr. Biffen: Is the Leader of the House aware that under the proposed changes

in power for the Ministry of Technology it appears that a great many of the articles and goods listed in the White Paper on the early-warning system for prices and incomes will now be transferred from the Board of Trade to the Ministry of Technology; and that this alone is a very good reason why the House should hear from the Minister of Technology how he seeks to implement that policy?

Mr. Bowden: I have already said that I am prepared to look at the means by which this information has been communicated to the House. I cannot go beyond that at this stage.

Mr. Robert Cooke: Is the Leader of the House aware of the grave anxiety about the manner of the Postmaster-General's announcement suggesting that colour television was only to be on 625-lines, and therefore only obtainable on B.B.C. 2, which means that the whole country will probably be deprived of colour television? Will the right hon. Gentleman find time for this matter to be debated?

Mr. Bowden: Not before the Christmas Recess, but I am quite prepared to look at it.

BILL PRESENTED

HOUSING SUBSIDIES

Bill to make further provision for the giving of financial assistance towards the provision of dwellings; to increase the amount of contributions payable in respect of hostels under section 15 of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1958; and to replace certain provisions as to the withholding, reduction, suspension, postponement or transfer of certain annual subsidies, presented by Mr. Crossman; supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. J. Griffiths, Mr. Mac-Dermot, Mr. Mellish, and Mr. MacColl; read the First time: to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed. [Bill 23.]

WELSH AFFAIRS

Matter of the Report of the Committee on the Legal Status of the Welsh Language (Command Paper No. 2785), being a matter relating exclusively to Wales and Monmouthshire, referred to the Welsh Grand Committee for their consideration. —[Mr. Bowden.]

Orders of the Day — COAL INDUSTRY [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make provision with respect to borrowing by, and loans by the Minister of Power to, the National Coal Board, it is expedient to authorise

(a) such increases in the sums which by or under any enactment are to be or may be issued out of the Consolidated Fund, raised by borrowing, or paid into the Exchequer, as may result from any provisions of the said Act with respect to—

(i) the lending by that Minister to that Board of any sums which that Board may require to borrow; or
(ii) the guarantee by the Treasury of the repayment of, and the payment of any interest on, sums borrowed temporarily by that Board otherwise than from that Minister,
subject to the limitation that the aggregate amount outstanding in respect of the principal of all sums borrowed or deemed to be borrowed by that Board under the said Act shall not at any time exceed £750,000,000;
(b) the remission of any obligation of that Board to make in respect of any period beginning on or after 28th March, 1965 payments under section 28(1) of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946 in respect of the amount in excess of £545,085,482 of the aggregate of the sums outstanding at that date in respect of-

(i) such expenses and liabilities as are referred to in paragraph (a) of the said section 28(1); and
(ii) any advances made to that Board by that Minister under section 26 or 27 of that Act;
(c) the payment into the Exchequer of any sums required by the said Act of the present Session to be so paid;
(d) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of such grants not exceeding in the aggregate £30,000,000 by that Minister to that Board towards any increase of that Board's expenditure for any of the five years ending with 27th March, 1971 as it appears to that Minister will assist in accelerating the redeployment of the manpower resources of the Board and the elimination of uneconomic colliery capacity.

Resolution agreed to.

COAL INDUSTRY BILL

Considered in Committee.

[Sir SAMUEL STOREY in the Chair]

4.0 p.m.

Mr. John Peyton: I beg to move, That the Chairman do report progress and ask leave to sit again.
I do so at this stage to give the Government some opportunity of explaining their intentions. No Government Amendments have been tabled to the Bill. There will be no separate Report stage, and the Bill cannot be amended in another place because it is a Money Bill. This means that the Government are saying, "You can certainly put forward your arguments, but, whether they have any weight or not, we shall do nothing about them".
I suggest that those are very good grounds for moving this Motion, because clearly the Government are treating the House of Commons with absolute contempt. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that if this sort of thing is to happen, we will take it that discourtesy comes as naturally to the present Government as does inefficiency.

The Chairman: I regret that I am not prepared to accept the Motion at the present time.

Clause 1.—BORROWING BY, AND LOANS BY MINISTER OF POWER TO, NATIONAL COAL BOARD.)

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 15, after "Minister", to insert:
or, with the consent of the Minister, from any other person".
In the Bill the Government propose that in respect of short-term borrowing the Board can borrow either from the Minister, or, with the consent of the Minister, from any other person. When it comes to long-term borrowing, the Bill says that the Board can borrow with the consent of the Minister, from the Minister only. I suggest that the same formula should be used for long-term borrowing as the Government have in the Bill for short-term borrowing, and that with the consent of the Minister the Board should


also be able to borrow from any other person.
My first point about my Amendment is that it is permissive. This means that the borrowing, even if from another person, will be possible only with the consent of the Minister. Thus, he will retain full control, but the Amendment will give the Board and the Government greater flexibility in arrangements for long-term borrowing than will the proposals at present in the Bill.
As a former Minister, I am familiar with the arguments that have gone on with regard to this question, because it was proposed in earlier times that the Board might be allowed to borrow from the market. This question also arose with regard to other nationalised industries, which of course at one time were allowed to borrow from the market as well as from the Minister, which means the Treasury, and coming out of the Exchequer. The argument was that from the point of view of the Treasury and of the Bank of England it was easier, in the technical management of the National Debt, if the Board did not borrow independently, and all the money was channelled through the Exchequer.
That is a technical argument. I am not saying that it is without a good deal of power, but it is an argument that was used many years ago. I suggest to the Minister that it is wrong to continue this old formula, which I think I am right in saying has been used ever since the Board came into existence, because the industry today is facing totally changed conditions compared with those which it faced when it was nationalised.
When the industry was nationalised, it had what appeared to be a perpetual captive market. It was a monolithic industry, dealing almost entirely and alone with the supply of coal. It appeared that the market was so certain that it might almost be regarded as a kind of economic social service. Nobody in those days, or even for many years, could have anticipated the state of affairs which the industry faces today. The position is entirely different, owing to the competition of oil, natural gas coming into the picture, and so on, and I suggest that we ought to have some fresh thinking on the

financial structure of this great industry, which I think will be for the benefit of the industry.
In my Amendment I contemplate that the Board, with the permission of the Minister always, would be able to borrow medium or long-term from people other than the Minister—that is, from market —but I should also like to introduce the concept that it would permit borrowing by the Board from the market on equity terms as well, rather on the lines which I think have been introduced with regard to B.O.A.C.
I make that suggestion because the Board is now branching out—and I commend it on its enterprise in doing so —for example, into the exploration for natural gas in the North Sea in cooperation with the Gulf Oil Company of America, and the Allied Oil Company of America. An operation which is engaged in trying to find natural gas in the North Sea is an operation which I think most financial experts would say is pre-eminently a risky one, appropriate to be financed by equity capital, and not at all a debenture operation, which is more appropriate to some safe public utility type of operation.
The same consideration applies to the enterprise which the National Coal Board is undertaking with Stewarts and Lloyds for the making of plastics, and I think we have to contemplate that in the future the Board, which under Lord Robens' dynamic leadership has become very enterprising, may branch out into joint ventures with other big industrial concerns in this country.
These ventures will have a considerable risk element in them, and I suggest, therefore, that we ought to be thinking in terms of some change in the financial structure of the Board, which we might call an equity element, to match that which is coming from its private enterprise partners in particular enterprises of this kind.
I should like just to touch on the even more difficult question whether, as would be permitted under my Amendment, there should ever be an equity element in the main capital structure of the Board. This is obviously a much more difficult question. It would be a brave man who would suggest that that should be done at the present time, although I might point out


that when the Government, as in this Bill, are halving the capital of the Board, they are in effect admitting in principle that it was equity all the time. I know that it would be a very big question indeed to consider equity as far as the main activities of the Board are concerned, but we should give some support to this great industry in the difficulty that it is facing at present.
I admire very much the efforts which Lord Robens has made to introduce the most up-to-date management techniques in this industry. In the same way, I am sure that hon. Members are pleased that the Postmaster-General has brought in a consultancy management firm to help with regard to the Post Office, and we know what Lord Aldington, when he was Chairman of the Select Committee on the Nationalised Industries, my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent), and many others who served on this Committee did towards the efficient operation of the National Coal Board.
At the present time this great industry is facing considerable difficulties, and yet, if we look on the other side of the Atlantic to the coal industry there, we find that there is a message of hope for our own industry. It is a remarkable development which we have seen over there. It was described in a most interesting article in The Times of 27th October which commented upon the great resurgence of the coal industry in the United States during the last four years. The most startling development of all was that one of the large American oil companies, Continental Oil, made a 600 million dollar bid for one of the largest American coal companies, Consolidated Coal Company, because they believe, with the new processes which have been developed over there for the making of petrol from coal, that coal is becoming competitive and commercial once again.
It is in the spirit of an equity element introduced into the National Coal Board at some lime in the future that I have moved the Amendment. Under the Amendment it would be permissive and not mandatory. We might thus improve still further the commercial viability and the commercial and industrial dynamism of the coal industry. It is in that spirit that I put forward the Amendment and appeal to our business experts and

economists to have some fresh thinking about the financial structure of the nationalised industries.

Mr. Arthur F. Palmer: Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that it would be fair to the coal industry if it were given extra powers to go into other fuel industries, such as the oil industry, with equity capital?

Mr. Lloyd: It seems that the powers are already sufficient, because the National Coal Board is already in cooperation with oil companies of America in a search for natural gas and in cooperation with Stewarts and Lloyds in the manufacture of plastics.

Mr. Leo Abse: Mr. Leo Abse (Pontypool) rose——

The Chairman: Order. The right hon. Member has moved the Amendment and I should now propose the Question.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths (Bury St. Edmunds): I should like strongly to support the Amendment, not because I am expert on coal, although I once worked briefly in a coal mine, nor because I am an expert on finance, though, like most hon. Members, I have an overdraft. I support the Amendment because I feel that, above all, we need new thinking in our search for new capital. We must get away from some of the older formulae which have been with us for so long. I support it, too, because it offers a prospect of greater flexibility in providing finance for the Coal Board and because it could tap new sources of badly needed capital, including international capital.
As was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd), the Coal Board is plainly moving into some quite new fields. For the most part I welcome this, although I might have some objection if the hon. Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) were to press what I think he has in mind. The Coal Board is already producing, for example, bricks; I think that it is the second largest brick producer in the country. It is engaged in gas exploration in conjuction with American oil companies, it is contemplating the manufacture of pipes and it has even been in advertising, although I gather that at the moment the Board is withdrawing from advertising. These


are new departures for the Coal Board which I welcome.
But where the Board goes off in these new directions, it is right that we should try to find new ideas of how to finance them. It may be that there are some ways in which we can assist the coal industry in working in conjunction with private enterprise in many of the new fields. I should like to commend to the House one tentative approach to new international financing for the Coal Board which I think has some merit. I suggest to the Minister the pattern which has been followed by the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community. The Amendment would make that possible. There would be an advantage if we followed that pattern, because the day may come when we associate ourselves with Europe, and, to the extent to which we had begun to follow their pattern, we should find our arrangements helpful.
But there is a much narrower advanttage, and I should like to explain how this could be brought about. Over the last 10 years the High Authority has borrowed very large sums of money at very favourable interest rates in almost all the financial centres of Europe and America. The industry has benefited from this enormous injection of capital which has helped in all kinds of operation, such as the opening of new mines, the construction of coal workers' houses and many things which we need in this country, too.
4.15 p.m.
I should like to quote from the latest report of the European Coal and Steel Community. Over the last year alone the Authority was able to borrow 100 million DM. from a group of German banks for coal-mining purposes. The Authority obtained another 30 million DM. from privately-owned banks at 5¾ per cent., and 150 million French francs. The total was about 127 million dollars of new capital which the Authority was able to borrow from international banks.
In particular I commend to the Minister the fact that the High Authority was able to come to London and to get the merchant banks, led by Warburg, Hambro and Rothschild, to float on behalf of the European coal industry a loan of no less

than 30 million dollars. This was a public issue in Euro-dollars handled by British brokers and offered at a rate of 5¼ per cent.—which I suspect the National Coal Board would be delighted to get at present —over a period of 20 years. When it was quoted on the London Market only a matter of months ago it was snapped up on the same day. It was an undoubted success. People were willing to invest in the coal mines of Europe—in many cases nationalised but in some cases not entirely State-run.
Why should not the British coal industry be enabled to tap these badly needed sources of capital? Heaven knows the industry needs the capital. There is is nothing revolutionary about this procedure, because the High Authority has been doing it since 1957. I saw something of its first attempt when it brought to Europe a whole trainload of well-to-do American coal owners, union leaders, bankers and so on and Jean Monnet took them around the coal mines of Europe and let them see for themselves. When they went back to New York the High Authority asked them for 100 million dollars—and they provided it.

Mr. Abse: I do not know whether I have misunderstood the proposal, but I understand that there is no suggestion that equity capital should go into the coal mines. What is being suggested is that equity capital should be used for what is described as risk capital in connection with plastics and gas exploration, for example. Am I being naïve in thinking that what hon. Members opposite want to do is to get a good return on the new, the novel and the developing industries and to make certain that they do not put their money into existing coal mines?

Mr. Griffiths: The hon. Member is never naive, but his question demonstrates the intense and old-fashioned suspicion of hon. Members opposite to any new idea. What I am trying to propose is a new source of badly needed capital for the coal industry, and what the coal industry does with it is its own business. That is a straight answer to the hon. Member. I hope that where the coal industry is going into new departures, such as the manufacture of pipes and the provision of gas, this would be an attractive proposal. But we need that money anyway, and at the moment the


British Treasury is stretched to provide it. I am sorry to hear the hon. Member trying to get in the way of a nationalised industry finding more capital for itself than we in this country are in a position to provide.
May I come back to the arrangements which were made on that first High Authority loan in 1957. The High Authority signed a contract with 50 investment banks in New York, under the leadership of Kuhn-Loeb, Lazard-Freres and the First Boston Corporation, and sold 35 million dollars worth of High Authority bonds. The public offering was snapped up in eight hours.
I underline to the Minister—who, I am sure, is paying the closest attention to this new possibility of capital—that the private international banking houses did not ask for a lien or mortgage on the physical assets of the High Authority's coal mines. How was it secured? I suspect that hon. Gentlemen opposite might object to any such loan operation on the part of the British Coal Board which would involve giving to international or private financiers a lien on the pits in this country.

Mr. Palmer: On public property.

Mr. Griffiths: Yes indeed, but on this occasion the hon. Gentleman has walked straight into it because this lien required no such arrangement. That is why I am making this suggestion to the Government today. If it had required British national assets—the pits here—to be pledged to international moneylenders I would certainly not expect hon. Gentlemen opposite to accept the idea, but it did not require such an undertaking.
These High Authority loans were secured on what is known as an act of pledge. The High Authority merely offered to the lenders its good name and that of the Governments which stood behind it. No more than that was needed. For all practical purposes, the loan of the Warburg and Hambro Companies which was floated a few months ago was unsecured and nothing more than what is known as a negative agreement on the part of the High Authority was required. In other words, the High Authority said, "In return for your lending us this money against our good name and prospects as a coalmining industry we simply

agree not to offer a lien on our pits to anybody else during the term of the loan. However, if, for some unforeseen reason, it is found necessary to do so, we will not offer a lien to anybody on terms any more favourable than we would offer to you and our creditors".

Mr. Palmer: My views are clear cut on this issue. Considering that we are discussing assets which are in public ownership and a public enterprise industry, would the hon. Gentleman be in favour of some kind of mortgage of British public property for the purpose he is describing?

Mr. Griffiths: I hope that I was not so unclear in my remarks. I specifically said that if the international banks in question were to ask Her Majesty's Government that they should be given a lien on British Coal Board physical assets in this country, I would then not be so naive as to put the suggestion I am making before the present Government. I have tried to explain that all that was given as security for this loan was an act of pledge; in other words, an undertaking not to give mortgages to anybody else during the term of the loan, a perfectly reasonable arrangement. For any hen. Gentleman opposite, after a Labour Government have been in power for a year during which they have pledged almost everything except the Crown Jewels, to object on this ground is quite flimsy.
Here is a new source of capital which is capable of being tapped and, to answer the question put earlier by the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse), it is capable of being tapped and used without specifications being given. I imagine that that meets the point he had in mind.
I am not suggesting that this is the exact pattern which the National Coal Board should follow. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield said that the Amendment was permissive and not mandatory and I have been given to understand that many important members of the National Coal Board take a favourable view of this suggestion. I ascertained that beforehand. I also ascertained that there is considerable support for it in the City of London from the point of view of lendine, to the nationalised industries.
It should be realised that it would provide a new source of international capital


at favourable rates over a long period. Above all, we should be using our national asset, represented by the coal industry, in a dynamic fashion. To do this we should get international loans, which at present we are not getting, based on the assets of our basic industries. To do so would cost the Government nothing —except, perhaps, their pride.
The Amendment does not require the National Coal Board to take this action. It does not ask the Board to do it but merely says, in effect, "Do not legislate yourself into a corner so that you cannot, in any circumstances, do this if it suits you." It merely asks that the Board leaves itself open to avail itself of this source of capital if it should so desire to take advantage of it—and then with the permission of the Minister. The Minister would lose nothing because his permission would remain.
I hope that, whatever our political views, none of us regards the present state of nationalisation as the end of the road. Technical changes are occurring the whole time. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have changed their views on many things, as have my hon. Friends and I. Technological and other developments are changing the whole structure of world trade and there is need for change in the formulae and techniques of the management of our basic industries.
I urge the Minister to have the wisdom to contemplate new approaches to this difficult problem, particularly at a time when all industries and social services are looking for new sources of capital. Do not let us write into the Bill a Clause which would preclude the coal industry, with the permission of the Minister, from looking elsewhere.

The Minister of Power (Mr. Frederick Lee): I certainly do not dismiss the point made by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Eldon Griffiths) and I agree that we should not be hidebound in looking at the Statutes governing the nationalised industries. If there are ways in which we can, to advantage, assist these industries to meet the changing pattern of world trade, then by all means let us look at them.
It was in that spirit that the Government looked at the position of B.O.A.C., where we now have Exchequer dividend

capital being utilised. This is being done in what we consider to be an extremely worthwhile experiment and, frankly, we are going to look closely at the results of our experiment so that if it might be appropriate in other instances, we do not close our minds to that possibility.
The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd) pointed out that the National Coal Board has never had powers to borrow long-term from other than the Minister. I appreciate that conditions are changing rapidly. For that reason I listened with great interest to the remarks of hon. Gentlemen opposite, though I must say that I do not believe that a case has been made out as yet for the Government accepting this particular Amendment.
As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield pointed out, the present method of borrowing came about some time ago. Under other statutes other nationalised industries had power to borrow long-term from people other than the Minister, but this arrangement was deemed to be causing considerable technical difficulties in the market and a Conservative Administration altered those provisions and adopted what is now the present condition of borrowing.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds discussed the methods of financing in Europe. He will appreciate that a great many of the coal mines in the E.C.S.C. area are privately owned and operated and that, therefore, they have no access to Government loans as such. E.C.S.C. loans are made available to the industries at rates compared with the market rates obtaining in those countries.
In many ways they come from a sort of quasi-Government credit within E.C.S.C. I think the financing is on a basis which is in large measure almost equivalent to Government financing. I make that point because it would not be giving the Committee the right impression if it were suggested that there were great advantages in having private investment in what, for the purposes of what we are discussing, are nationalised industries, whereas in the E.C.S.C. countries they are largely privately-owned.

4.30 p.m.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I must ask the Minister to accept that he is not correct.


The great majority of the coal industries in the countries mentioned are nationalised. In New York and elsewhere loans are floated which are in no sense quasi-Governmental but are made against the good name of the High Authority.

Mr. Frederick Lee: The information I have given the House is that in those extensive areas where there are privately-owned coal-mining operations——

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: No.

Mr. Lee: We can settle this as the debate proceeds. I shall get further information if the hon. Member disputes what I am saying. My information is that they are given specially advantageous terms and conditions and at the end of the day they have practically the equivalent of Government loans.
If we look at the position which arose during the 1959–60 period we see that the Radcliffe Committee gave an opinion on this, which I shall quote to the Committee:
If the nationalised industries are to make their own issues, either they must time them according to the level of their bank borrowing (the practice until 1956), or they must time them at their own discretion, or they must be subject to Treasury discretion. Either the first or the second would be liable to lead to just the same kind of difficulty as before 1956, and we should prefer that, as long as the securities are equivalent (as most of them must remain) to Government bonds, the monetary authorities should have unfettered discretion in their issue.
This was brought about by a Conservative Government following the Radcliffe Committee's Report.
The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield pointed to the great difficulties in liquidity prior to this announcement, and although certainly my mind is not closed to the need for change in these matters, I have not heard a case made which vitiates the great problems to get rid of which the present mode of financing was instituted. I put it to the Committee and point to the Government's experiments with B.O.A.C. that it is not a question merely of a blank refusal of any new form of financing. That, I think, is answered by the B.O.A.C. decision. Hon. Members opposite, when they were in power, not only adopted but created these conditions. There was no provision in the Transport Act, 1962, for borrowing long-term other than from the

Exchequer. The position relating to nationalised industries' financing has not changed since then. For these reasons I hope that the Committee will reject the Amendment.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I wish to comment briefly on the points made by the Minister. Would he not at least agree to consult the Coal Board before closing his mind to this proposal? Could he not at least ask the Board whether the proposals which have been put forward very modestly would suit the Board and whether the Board would like to do this? His reply has not shown deep knowledge of the subject. With respect, I do not think that he had done his homework about the financing of the High Authority. The High Authority in the past years has borrowed from international banks large sums of money without pledging the assets in question. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consult Lord Robbens or anyone else to see whether this will suit the Coal Board.

Mr. Frederick Lee: In answer to the hon. Member, I consult Lord Robens almost hourly on issues now confronting the Coal Board, but there has been no suggestion from Lord Robens nor from any nationalised industry that this kind of financing is considered by them to be important. There are private mines in Germany except in the Saar and in Belgium. There are State mines in France and Holland. The production in Germany alone is about 140 million tons, which is well over half the production for the E.C.S.C.

Mr. J. T. Price: I do not wish to detain the Committee for more than a few minutes, but I am constrained to say a few words because an entirely false impression would be created in this important matter if it went out from Parliament that the Labour Party is completely hidebound in the changing circumstances of the modern world. That is not so. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Eldon Griffiths) and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd), who have made temperate speeches, for raising this issue, though the proposition may not at present be acceptable to this House. Nevertheless, it is important that these issues should be raised.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds could have made his case stronger than the premise on which he argued if, instead of quoting the High Authority method of financing which, so far as my limited information goes, he quoted accurately, he had quoted the Italian experience. Italy has been described as the economic miracle of Europe. I have been to Italy a number of times and I have been there quite recently. I have no axe to grind in this matter; I am not tied to any commercial interest, as my hon. Friends know. Italy has made tremendous progress. It has employed the most novel methods of financing for its nationalised industries.
It has great institutions such as the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, which is an agency of the Government in Italy. The I.R.I. is a Government-sponsored agency answerable to the Minister of Planning of the Italian Government and it controls 80 per cent. of the Italian steel industry which is making great progress. It controls the whole of the shipping lines, all the great shipyards, shipbuilding in general, and the whole of the air fleets, Alitalia Airlines and the motorways, which at present are producing a substantial revenue. It controls all telecommunications and other services, which are vital and are the commanding heights of the Italian economy.
Although many Italians do not enter into the sort of ideological battles to which we are accustomed—I am not running away from any ideological battle —and while they have carried out vast reorganisations of Italian industry under direct and indirect Government control, they have not been ideological in the way in which they have raised finance. Anyone can consult the authorities about this, for there is plenty of literature on the subject. In Italy, apart from the railways. which were the first railways to be nationalised—they were nationalised in 1906 before we even had a Labour Party —industries have been largely financed on this basis. Italy, of course, has no coal.
The Italian Government have guaranteed 10 per cent. of the capital required to finance State-sponsored objectives and 90 per cent. has been raised on the market. In the last couple of months when the latest I.R.I. funds were floated, within a few hours 60,000 million lira were

raised. On a rough calculation, that is about £35 million. This is going on on a large scale. The whole of the Italian oil industry is under nationalised control.
I do not know whether this will be any great comfort to hon. Members opposite, but they can make what they like of it from an ideological point of view. I do not run away from labels; I regard myself as a Socialist, perhaps not an entirely theoretical one, but an idealist one. I make no apology for that. I need not do so. Whatever ideological view is taken of these matters, it is true that one of our great European competitors and one of our great friends is making tremendous progress and makes no objection to money being raised; and money is forthcoming.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: At what rate of interest?

Mr. Price: I am advised that the rate of interest on the last 60,000 million lira loan was 6 per cent., which compares favourably with rates in this country. It may surprise hon. Members opposite that someone on this side of the Committee should speak in this way. I am facing reality. When I entered the Chamber I did not intend to make a speech, but I have been goaded into making one by what hon. Members opposite have said. But that is what the House of Commons is about. Too many "midnight oil" speeches are made here. I should like it better if people would rise occasionally and say what they really believe and not what some civil servant has dished out to them—or some back-room boy of the Tory Central Office. However, I must not be carried away.
My only doubt in saying what I have done is that felt by most of us who have tried to look at these matters philosophically. I am always rather sceptical about putting myself in pawn to moneylenders, whether they are international moneylenders or national moneylenders. I have never taken anything to a pawnshop in my life. I have never needed to. I would not do so, unless I was driven to it.
With all these great projects it is not necessarily that there is not the will to carry them out. It is that sometimes the resources are lacking. My right hon. Friends in charge of Government Departments sometimes have to say, to my great


regret, that although they want to carry out many projects the resources are not always available. Many good intentions are frustrated by the resources not being available at the right time. If novel methods could be devised, perhaps methods which have previously been rejected, on grounds which we all know, we ought to consider them with an open mind.
I have risen, not to support the Amendment, because it may not be the right way to do it at this moment, but merely to say that these things are being tried out very successfully in other parts of Europe, particularly in Italy.

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: The hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) may not be hidebound in his attitude to these financial questions, but I fear that the Government are. As this matter has now been ventilated, I have no desire to prolong the discussion. However, I must say that it was rather disappointing to hear the Minister, in this era of technological change, basing himself on a backward-looking view of the technical financial difficulties put up by the Bank of England years ago. The right hon. Gentleman showed no realisation of the need to adapt the financial structure of this great industry to the challenges it will meet.
In particular, the Minister entirely failed to deal with the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Eldon Griffiths), that there might be new additional sources of capital available to the Coal Board which are not available under the present restrictive Clauses in the Bill. The Minister must be entirely wrong in his idea that the funds raised on the market for the Higher Authority are, so to speak, quasi-Government funds, because 2 million dollars have been raised in New York. Anybody who thinks that funds which come from the New York market are quasi-Government funds coming from European Governments needs to think again. It is obviously absurd. The right hon. Gentleman has given an unsatisfactory reply, but, to facilitate business, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

4.45 p.m.

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: I beg to move Amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 18, to leave out paragraph (a).

The Chairman: With this Amendment it will be convenient to discuss Amendment No. 3, in page 2, line 2, leave out paragraph (c); Amendment No. 4, in page 2, line 9, leave out paragraph (e); and Amendment No. 5, in page 2, line 14, leave out paragraph (g).

Mr. McNair-Wilson: These Amendments have been tabled because we on this side believe that the Minister has a great deal of explaining to do. Clause 1 deals with borrowing. Subsection (2) gives the Board power to borrow from the Minister, subject to the overall borrowing limit,
such sums as the Board may require in connection wish their functions for all or any of the following purposes".
A long list follows. It is a list which greatly concerns my hon. Friends. Indeed, we have been unable to find a precedent anywhere in any other legislation of this sort for a list of this nature. We believe that we are in the presence of some very sinister legislation this afternoon. We hope that the Minister will be able to put our minds at rest when he replies. It may be that we are being unduly alarmed and that a nice cosy answer will be given by the Minister which will satisfy us. But I very much doubt it.
This list suggests to us that back-door nationalisation is being put forward in the Bill. A study of the points enumerated in the Bill shows that a veritable salad of possibilities exist. Amendment No. 2 seeks to delete paragraph (a), which is to the effect that money may be borrowed by the Board
for meeting any expenses properly chargeable to capital, being expenses incurred in connection with the provision or improvement of assets".
Amendment No. 3 seeks to delete paragraph (c), which provides that money may be borrowed
for acquiring an undertaking or part of an undertaking.
What does this mean?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power (Mr. John Morris): What it says.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: What it says to me is that the Board is now to be given power to take over, or trade in, anything that catches its fancy. There is no definition in the Bill to say that it should not. It does not say anywhere in the Bill that the undertaking has to be connected with the coal industry, though one presumes that the word "functions" which I quoted earlier covers that.
Amendment No. 4 seeks to delete paragraph (e), which provides that money may be borrowed
for subscribing for or acquiring shares, stock, debentures, debenture stock, or other securities of a like nature, of a body corporate, otherwise than by way of investment.
Finally, there is the omnibus provision which we ask the Minister to look at really seriously:
(g) for any purpose for which capital moneys are properly applicable (whether or not specified in the foregoing paragraphs of this subsection).
An absolutely blank cheque is being given here for the Board to do exactly what it likes in entering into or trading in any business that catches its fancy.

Mr. Abse: We had a taste of empiricism from the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd) with the idea that private capital should go into public enterprise. Do I understand that the distinction now is that that is permissible but it is not permissible that public enterprise should go into private business?

Mr. McNair-Wilson: The hon. Member has jumped the gun, as he often does. I am not criticising the enterprise which the Government seek to enter. What I am criticising is that in a money-borrowing Bill we are having slipped in a whole lot of provisions which should be debated in a totally different way in the House. We are well aware that the Queen's Speech said:
Legislation will be introduced to remove statutory limitations impeding the proper use of the manufacturing resources of nationalised industries.
That is pretty ambiguous, but at least it led my hon. Friends and I to believe that the Government intended to introduce proper, separate legislation to give these industries the opportunities which it was stated they required.

Mr. John Morris: The hon. Member used the expression "slipped in". Is he

suggesting that the Government are doing anything underhand?

Mr. McNair-Wilson: Yes, indeed, I am suggesting exactly that. I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman came so clearly to the point, because here we are in the presence of a money Bill which cannot be amended in another place, and once this legislation goes through there is nothing that we in the House of Commons can do about it. The Parliamentary Secretary is exactly right. It is most underhand.
If we part with this Bill are we to assume that we shall have given this industry blanket powers to acquire whatever catches its eye? I will refer later to the possibilities that I see here. Will the Minister tell us whether further legislation is to be introduced to cover these provisions? We all know that the Government were very reluctant to introduce a Bill to nationalise the steel industry. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer made clear a short time ago, they would do it when they had a large majority. Yet here we are passing into law legislation which will give huge nationalisation powers to the coal industry without such a Bill having to go through its stages in the House and being voted upon—perhaps with the Liberal Party voting against it—and then being sent to another place.
What has happened is that very clearly—and I must admit this to the Minister—the right hon. Gentleman has managed to mask the real issue by introducing this matter into a borrowing powers Bill, but I would remind the Committee that the words in the Labour Party's manifesto at the last election on this point were that the nationalised industries
will be encouraged, with the removal of the present restrictions placed upon them, to diversify and move into new fields:"—
[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] That is a sweeping statement clearly welcomed by hon. Members opposite. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"]
for example, the railways' workshops will be free to seek export markets, and the National Coal Board to manufacture machinery and equipment it needs.
[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Since hon. Members opposite are so enthusiastic about this, can the Minister tell us which mining company he has in mind?

Mr. Emrys Hughes: The hon. Gentleman's.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: The hon. Member is quite wrong. I only wish that I had one. Is the Minister thinking about companies like Dowty's, which manufactures hydraulic pit props? Are we to take from the cheers of hon. Members opposite and what appear to be nods of assent from the Parliamentary Secretary that we are now moving into a period when this industry is to start taking over—"nationalising" is the word I like—various manufacturing companies in the mining industry?

Mr. David Weitzman: The hon. Gentleman is making very heavy weather of this. Will he look at line 15 of Clause 1(2) and read the words
… such sums as the Board may require in connection with their functions …"?

Mr. McNair-Wilson: I am most grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman. We covered that point earlier, but I will return 10 it for his benefit. I should like the Minister to say what the functions are. Is going to the North Sea, as has been suggested, a function of the Board?

Mr. Frederick Lee: I said that this would be subject to legislation in the House.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: "Subject to legislation in the House", but I am trying to get the Minister to tell us whether or not the legislation which we are at this moment considering is the legislation which allows him to permit the Coal Board to enter into this new field.

Mr. Lee: indicated dissent.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: Are we, therefore, to take it that this is nothing but a technical Clause which does not give the powers that I have outlined?
We are very unhappy about Clause 1(2). There are no clear definitions in it of the responsibilities of the Board. If the words mean nothing and we are not to worry about them, why are they in the Bill? If they are as important as we think they are, I should like the Minister to explain in detail what is intended. The Committee and the country are entitled to know.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: I have been looking up other Acts to see whether words similar to those in this Clause can be found in them. The one which I happened to pick up in the Vote Office before coming into the debate was the Transport Act, 1962, and I have been making a comparison between Section 19 of that Act and the Clause at present before us. I noticed that they are almost word for word the same, and I am therefore not inclined to agree with the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. McNair-Wilson) that this Clause has the sinister interpretation which he seeks to place upon it. Nor can it be said that the Government are doing anything underhand when they are following the example set for them by their Tory predecessors. [Laughter.] Well, perhaps I am wrong about that.
It is true that there are a few differences in the wording and I should like to draw the attention of the Committee to these in case they have significance, and perhaps the Minister will deal with them in his reply. Subsection (2,a) of this Clause is identical with Section 19(2,a) of the Transport Act, 1962, with the exception that the words
… in connection with the business of the Board
appear at the end of the sentence in the Transport Act but are left out in this Clause. It may well he claimed by the Minister that the phrase quoted in an intervention covers this point and that these expenses must be in connection with the business of the Board under the whole Clause and therefore it is not necessary to repeat the words here.
In paragraph (d) the words at the end,
within the meaning of section 154 of the Companies Act, 1948
do not appear in the corresponding part of Section 19 of the Transport Act, 1962.

5.0 p.m.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: Paragraph (d) is not the subject of an Amendment.

Mr. Lubbock: I know, but I am taking the differences between this Clause and the Section of the 1962 Act generally because I think that it would be helpful if the Minister were to deal with the point now rather than on the Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill", since we are seeking to uncover the significance of this whole series of provisions.
The words in paragraph (e),
shares, stock, debentures, debenture stock, or other
have been added to the words which appear in the corresponding paragraph of Section 19 of the Transport Act, 1962.
The words at the end of paragraph (g),
of this subsection
have been added to the corresponding paragraph in the 1962 Act.
I hope that I have not wearied the Committee with these details, but I thought it necessary, for the sake of clarity, to specify all the differences between this Clause and what was obviously its model so that, if there be any deep meaning in the differences, the Minister can deal with it.

Mr. Donald Box: Will the hon. Gentleman clear up two points? Is he, in effect, telling the Committee that paragraph (c),
for acquiring an undertaking or part of an undertaking
is not included in the 1962 Act, and also that the words in paragraph (e),
for subscribing for or acquiring shares, stock …
and so on are not included in the Transport Act?

Mr. Lubbock: What I am doing is to itemise the differences between this series of provisions and the corresponding provisions of the Transport Act, 1962. I did not mention the words,
for acquiring an undertaking or part of an undertaking".
because they are identical in the previous Act.
Unfortunately, I did not have time to look at the report of the proceedings in Committee on the 1962 Act to find out whether hon. and right hon. Members of the present Opposition disputed the right of their Government to put them in at that time. Perhaps they thought that, it being a Tory Government, these powers could safely be conferred upon their own Minister. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] I hear an hon. Gentleman behind me saying, "Hear, hear", but it seems to me that, in considering the capital financing of the nationalised industries in general, there is something to be said for uniformity. The pattern which suits the Railways Board, for example, is very

likely to meet the needs of the National Coal Board also.
Therefore, with great respect to the hon. Member for Lewisham, West, I see nothing violently objectionable in these provisions. I should like to have explanations on the detail from the Minister, but, subject to my being satisfied on that aspect of the matter, I am prepared to accept the wording as it stands.

Mr. Frederick Lee: To take up at once the point made by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), I confirm that there are the differences which he outlined but I assure him that they are of a purely drafting nature and they do not have the slightest difference in substance from the provisions in the 1962 Act which he quoted.
As time goes on, the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. McNair-Wilson) will learn that, if one is not sure of something, it is better to ask questions and not make statements. He comes to the Box and tells us that this is back-door nationalisation, that there is something sinister about it, that it is an underhanded procedure. He should not charge his right hon. Friends with that kind of conduct. Of course, we have lifted this all from the Tory Act, the Transport Act, 1962. As the hon. Gentleman goes on, he will learn how to keep in the crease. He has just come down to the Front Bench, but when people hear about this, he will be back on the back benches before he can say "knife".
What we are doing in this Bill is to spell out what was covered by the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act, 1946. We were not clear why the Opposition put down these Amendments. We thought that, perhaps, they were under a misapprehension as to our intention in enumerating the purposes in this Bill. But, as I have said, the 1946 Act did not spell out, as we do here, the items referred to in the Amendments, and the hon. Gentleman now wants to wipe them out.
Section 26 of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act, 1946, states simply,
For the purpose of enabling the Board to defray expenditure properly chargeable to capital account, including the provision of working capital, the Minister may make advances to the Board …
Obviously, the Opposition are under the impression that the new form of words


adopted in this Bill widens the powers of the Board. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) raised this point on Second Reading—his words are reported in column 854 of HANSARD—and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary answered him when winding up in this way:
An hon. Member asked whether the powers of borrowing set out in the Bill would give new powers to the Board. They will not. The Board will exercise its borrowing powers within its present functions."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1965; Vol 721, c. 881.]
The hon. Member for Orpington pointed out that similar provisions are to be found in the Transport Act, 1962, Section 19(2), and further similar provisions are to be found in Section 5(2) of the Airports Authority Act, 1965. The same procedure is followed. In other words, the Government in 1962 created this precedent, probably a very right and proper one, in spelling out in more detail what had appeared in previous legislation in the form of a blanket provision such as that I have quoted from the 1946 Act. If one compares these so-called sinister provisions with Section 19(2) of the Conservative Government's Transport Act of 1962, one finds that they are identical except for the points of difference brought out by the hon. Member for Orpington.
While I deplore having to admit that we are copying something done by the last Government, I feel that I must rush to the defence of right hon. Gentlemen opposite. They were not trying to introduce back-door legislation to nationalise things which they had not the courage openly to nationalise. On three or four occasions, I have admitted their courage in nationalising the North Sea, but I can go no further than that.
The provisions in the Clause now before the Committee are almost word for word the same as those in the enactment brought in by the Conservative Government in 1962. I can give a specific assurance that the wording of this Bill does not in any way widen the powers which the Coal Board has by virtue of the 1946 Act. But, of course, as hon. Members have said, there is need for diversification. With our usual ability to look ahead, this need was envisaged in 1946. In the 1946 Act, the Coal Board was given quite wide powers

to diversify and, during the intervening years, it has taken advantage of these and has, in fact, made arrangements with a great many private enterprise organisations. Here are some examples, most of them taken from the period when the Conservative Government was in office.
The Coal Board has made arrangements with Benzole Producers Ltd., the Yorkshire Tar Corporation Ltd., the Brick Development Association, Pitch Polymer Products, J. H. Sankey and Son, Ltd., the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation, Thomas Ness, Ltd.—and so one could go on. Hon. Members opposite, during the period of office of the Conservative Government, saw the National Coal Board doing these things and approved of them. It is therefore a bit much for them to accuse us of trying to provide facilities of a similar type.
I think that the hon. Gentleman owes an apology to the Committee—I do not ask it for the Government—for suggesting that the Committee is so lacking in knowledge as to think that, in 1962, the Tory Government made a sinister attempt to stab private enterprise in the back by widening the powers of the transport undertakings. To attack what we are doing after having agreed to permit the Conservative Government to so abuse the powers of nationalised industries as to work to the detriment of private enterprise, is asking too much of the Committee.
There is nothing sinister in these powers. The National Coal Board is seeking to use powers which the 1946 Act conferred on it and which we are spelling out in more detail, just as the last Government did in 1962. The words here are almost identical with those of the Transport Act, 1962. I have given an assurance that, where they differ, they do so merely in words which do not affect the substance of what I am saying.

Mr. John H. Osborn: The Minister of Power has now answered in more detail questions that I asked on Second Reading. I thank him for clarifying points which were not clear to me. I was a member of the Standing Committee which considered the 1962 Transport Act. I have been asked whether, under the powers which we think already exist under the 1946 Act


or the 1962 Act, if the National Coal Board could—and I am not necessarily being ridiculous here—buy up a peanut factory or a crisp factory, for instance, to supply its canteens.
There is a fundamental difference between the two sides. There is a contrast between the Conservative Party's attitude, which is to limit expansion of the public sector and the present Government's attitude, which is to expand the public sector. I understand that these powers, whether granted by the Conservative Government or perpetrated in the 1946 Act, could be used to bring about a much wider diversification than appears of a nationalised industry to be the case at first sight.
Before the last election there were various publications trying to illustrate the differences between the two parties. I had the chance to read two Aims of Industry publications again today. They were issued before the election. One was called "Creeping Nationalisation", and on page 3 it points out that the
… popular belief is that the Labour Party's plans for more public ownership are limited to the renationalisation of steel and road haulage is false.
Subsequent history has proved this true. Aims of Industry made similar statements in "Trojan Horse".
5.15 p.m.
In our debate last Thursday, I raised the question of Government policy on handling nationalised industries. I share with the view of my hon. Friend for Lewisham, West (Mr. McNair-Wilson) and some hon. Members on this side who feel that this was clouded as the real issue by the discussion on the personal hardships of the miners due to pit closures and the compensation necessary for them. Questions I asked in that debate have not been answered and I am not clear whether the Minister considers he has powers to take over mining equipment and machinery. Has he had these powers since 1946 or is he taking them now by borrowing the wording of the transport Act, 1962? I am not a lawyer and I seek clarification on this.
I have had a chance to look at "The New Britain", the Socialist manifesto, which clearly stated that the National Coal Board be given powers

… to manufacture the machinery and equipment it needs.
This occurred again in the Queen's Speech, when it was stated
Legislation will be introduced to remove the statutory limitations impeding the proper use of the manufacturing resources of the nationalised industries.
These objectives have been stated clearly. To what extent is it intended to implement them by Clause 1 of this Bill? Clause IV is as relevant now to the Socialist Party's modus vivendi as it was years ago and for the benefit of Members opposite it calls for
… common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration …
This surely extended into the debates we had on the steel industry. The White Paper on Steel clearly stated, in paragraph 28:
The nationalised steel industry will be able to diversify its activities when this appears commercially advantageous …
Going back to the debate on the first Amendment and to the contributions made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Eldon Griffiths), one has to ask what is wrong in expanding the range of activities of the nationalised industries. There is the danger of the National Coal Board diversifying into fields where it has neither the commercial, technical nor managerial "know-how". Money would be spent without the safeguards which ensure that private enterprise uses its money with a certain degree of wisdom or faces the consequences of going bankrupt. In this particular instance, even within this Bill there is to be £15 million in Government subsidy, which relates to a reserve for an increase in price.

Mr. Ifor Davies: The hon. Gentleman earlier referred to his regard for the people who might be displaced by mining closures. Would not he consider it prudent and right for the National Coal Board to set up plants for making mining machinery in those areas where pits are closed?

Mr. Osborn: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to complete my argument, I will define the type of conditions where I consider it would be prudent. I invite


the hon. Gentleman to read my Second Reading speech, when I said that even within the coal industry there were some advantages to nationalisation. I am trying to put forward a case which is both reasonable and logical.
If private enterprise diversifies, it is still subject to the normal checks and conditions that it should operate properly and not waste resources. Within industrial organisations, the Queen's Speech is being discussed and I understand that the Minister or others have appealed to industrial organisations on various grounds, saying that it is right, not only in the interests of those organisations but of the economy as a whole, that the nationalised industries should be as free as private industry to use and if necessary diversify public assets. There have been assurances from Ministers that there is no intention of permitting the nationalised industries to launch into wide extensions of their activities. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to give an assurance that he intends to confine the extent of the activities into which the Coal Board may diversify.

Mr. William Stones: The hon. Gentleman has referred to diversification by the National Coal Board. I can assure him, with the full agreement of the Minister, that we do not intend to diversify the industry into the production of potato crisps, but some of the "know-how" which he has mentioned already exists within the industry. It is a fact that some improvements in technology and mining machinery have been the result of the experience of the industry's experts and technologists. Why should that "know-how" be given to private enterprise if the Coal Board's engineers and technologists can produce what the Board requires?

Mr. Osborn: I would be the first to admit that much of the machinery provided for the Board, as for any other customer, is the result of co-operation and exchange of technical "know-how" between supplier and user. But the Minister has said that any investment to expand manufacture would be subject to Ministerial approval and private industry has been assured that that would be subject to the control of Parliament. How-

ever, as I explained last week, the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries last considered the coal industry in 1958 or 1959. So much for the machinery of Parliamentary control over the Coal Board and its activities!
When an industry comprises both public and private sectors, when there is excess capacity it should be assumed as a matter of course that the public enterprise will close down and Ministers have given the assurance that such cases would be considered on their merits. But in fact quite the contrary has happened and when there has been a conflict between a private enterprise supplier and a nationalised industry—and the classic example is the supply of locomotives and, even more so, the supply of railway carriages and wagons—it is the private sector which has had to suffer. The head of a nationalised industry—in the case of transport, Dr. Beeching—comes under pressure to keep his own workshops busy. This has undoubtedly meant private enterprise can go to the wall. I imagine that such a state of affairs can be found not only in the transport industry, but in the coal industry and I want to know whether the practice is to be extended or contracted.
If private industry diversifies, it does so at its own risk and subject to the full financial control of those who have lent it their money. The classic example in recent years of a very large company which has had to pull itself round has been the General Electric Company. It is now a viable company, although five or six years ago it was in dire trouble because it had overgrown and diversified too widely. The financial market was able to apply the normal checks. This provided the drive for G.E.C. to put itself on its feet. If a nationalised industry fails, it is the taxpayer who pays. There is no commercial and market control. If it makes a loss, and that has been a feature of many of our nationalised industries, it is the taxpayer who has to raise the subsidy.
I have been impressed by the arguments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield and of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds and even by the comment of the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) about other ways of financing the nationalised industries and I would


have thought that their arguments were well worth consideration.
If the Coal Board, a nationalised concern, has to rely on the taxpayer or State funds for its manufacturing purposes, its operations should be strictly limited. That rule should apply to any nationalised industry. While an industry is subject to close interference by a Minister—and I have raised the issue of the Coal Board's advertising policy—and is subject to financial provisions such as the £15 million which we are asked to provide, it is isolated from the normal commercial safeguards and controls. This is true even although interference from a Minister may be against its interests. If an industry is to be entirely subsidised out of State funds, that is, by the taxpayer, its purposes should be closely defined by legislation and, in the case of the Coal Board, confined to the gaining of coal in the narrow sense.
However, if there is a good argument—and industrialists are quite willing to listen to argument—for expanding the Board's activities, it must meet certain conditions. Obviously, if an industry is to be expanded, the existing industry must be viable or profitable. This is of advantage to the taxpayer, even if it provides a reason for diversification and calling on money from outside.
We also have to consider the size of units. I have a note of the various sizes of units. The Electricity Board has a capital employed of £2,872 million; British Rail, £1,277 million; Shell Transport, £1,266 million; the Post Office, £1,204 million. The N.C.B. has the largest number of employees, 517,000, and British Rail has 422,000. Our existing nationalised industries are about the largest concerns without the commercial safeguards which ensure that money is used profitably and effectively.

Mr. Stones: Will the hon. Gentleman say when the National Coal Board was subsidised?

Mr. Osborn: I shall have to ask the Minister that question.

Mr. Stones: But the hon. Gentleman made the statement.

Mr. Osborn: In this very Bill we are writing off half the capital. Who will have to pay for that writing off? It will be

the taxpayer. There may be a good case for the taxpayer having to pay, and I do not dispute it, but the hard fact is that it is the taxpayer who pays.

Mr. Stones: Can the hon. Gentleman say when the Coal Board has been subsidised?

Mr. Dan Jones: That is a fair question.

Mr. Osborn: It has had protection in one form—I mentioned this last week—because of the 2d. fuel tax.

Mr. Jones: The hon. Gentleman has repeatedly spoken of a subsidy and he has now been challenged and cannot reply. He ought not to base his case on a false premise. As a matter of fact, the mining industry has kept prices stable for the last year and no private industry has done the same. Rather than receive a subsidy, coal mining has conferred a subsidy on private industry.

Mr. Osborn: The margin of profit of the Coal Board has been far from giving a satisfactory return. I do not have the figures at my finger tips, but there have been many years when the nationalised industries have given a very poor return on the capital employed. That is the sort of yardstick to which any industry will have to match up if it is to survive. But the nationalised industries are exempt.

5.30 p.m.

Mr. Stones: I believe that the hon. Gentleman is usually very fair, and I think that to be honourable he ought to withdraw the statement which he has made. The Coal Board has never received one penny of subsidy, from this Government or any other Government. I think that he ought to be man enough, and honourable enough, to withdraw his statement. What has happened is that the Coal Board during the early years after nationalisation, subsidised private industry by selling coal below market price, to keep steel and other commodities on a stable basis. The hon. Gentleman should withdraw the statement he has made, that the Coal Board lived on subsidies.

Mr. Osborn: I am not going to pursue this argument because it is irrelevant to my main point. I genuinely believed that and I will check this by looking at the HANSARD report of today's debate. There may have been a slip of the


tongue if I said that the Coal Board is being subsidised. I may have got my facts wrong, but there have been hidden subsidies, in so far as the return of capital employed has not been satisfactory over the years.

Mr. Thomas Swain: Would the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the reasons that the finances of the Coal Board have failed, not miserably, but failed to some extent in the last few years, is because two years ago it reduced the price of coal to the steel manufacturers by half-a-crown a ton and gave them a 5 per cent. rebate on the money they spent on coal?

Mr. Osborn: If hon. Members will allow me not to pursue this point. There has been the same problem in the steel industry. With the controlled prices placed upon the industry by the Iron and Steel Board, it found that its prices were not sufficiently satisfactory. I was talking about the size of units.

The Temporary Chairman (Sir Harry Legge-Bourke): Might I ask the Committee to recall that when an hon. Member is addressing the Committee interruptions are perfectly understandable, but they have tended to become minor speeches, minor in two senses of the word. I am wondering whether the hon. Gentleman could be allowed to complete his speech.

Mr. Dan Jones: I ask with very great respect, Sir Harry, if it is proper for an hon. Member deliberately to mislead the Committee and then fail to substantiate his claim?

The Temporary Chairman: Order. The hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones) has made a very serious accusation in saying that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) was deliberately misleading the Committee. It is out of order to make such a charge and I must ask the hon. Member to reconsider his wording.

Mr. Jones: I withdraw the word "deliberately" and say "misleading the Committee". There is no evidence to show that the hon. Member can substantiate that charge, and I hope that in the interests of good debate the observation made should be withdrawn.

Mr. Osborn: I have pointed out that I do not wish to pursue this point of the subsidy of nationalised industry. If I am proved wrong later, I will, of course, apologise. It was not my intention to deliberately mislead the Committee and I will look very carefully at my words in this debate. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it was not my intention to mislead the Committee.
I was dealing with the question of the size of units, because I think that this is important. It could be that nationalised industries are too large to have the safeguards to which large companies are subject. One might ask under what sort of conditions would I approve of diversification of the nationalised industry. I think on a reduction in size. The only way of doing this is, perhaps, to split each independent nationalised authority into area boards, more independent, perhaps dependent on regional finance, and upon finance from outside whether from this country or eleswhere.
I ask the Minister to consider this argument carefully because it is the sort of argument which has been discussed in Europe, particularly in Germany, in so far as electricity is concerned, in order to make each unit of the industry more independent, flexible and viable, and able to stand up to the competition from other sources of energy. If these conditions are met, if the existing operations become viable, if the units become broken up and if financing is based upon commercial conditions. Only then are some of the conditions met which would justify the National Coal Board, or the area boards if they were made independent, in diversifying their activities. Under these conditions the taxpayer is granted the safeguards he would require. Those in my view are the conditions justifying diversification. At present we have a large, single-purpose monopoly, and if there are mistakes it is the taxpayer who pays. Without again referring to our arguments in this debate about subsidies, I think that hon. Members would agree that where there are mistakes the taxpayer pays. In this Clause we have a means of implementing Clause 4 of the Labour Party policy. The public sector as such is too large. It has taken 40 per cent. of our gross national product and I think that the infiltration of State


influence into commercial activity is already too large.
If that is the case, whatever my argument to the Committee now, ultimately it is the standard of living of the people in this country which will be affected.

Mr. Weitzman: I will not detain the Committee for more than a couple of minutes but I am tempted to get up in view of the long speech to which we have listened, made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) and which has been based on a misunderstanding of what this Bill really means. There has been a lot of irrelevant talk about sinister things and all sorts of nonsense. If the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. McNair-Wilson), who dealt with this matter in moving this Amendment, had only taken the trouble to look at the subsection, he would have seen how nonsensical the whole of the argument is. In private industry, a private company or public company, there is a memorandum of association dealing with the functions of the company in connection with its business. This subsection does the same thing for the nationalised industries. If only hon. Gentlemen opposite had had the common sense to look at Clause 1(2) which says:
subject to subsection (3) of this Section, the Board may borrow (otherwise than by way of temporary loan) from the Minister such sums as the Board may require in connection with their functions for all or any of the following purposes…
Those purposes are then itemised. So, to talk about anything sinister is quite ridiculous. This is simply a power given to enable the coal industry to carry out its functions. It is the same sort of power as is given to any private or public company. The whole of the speech we have just listened to is simply irrelevant and has nothing to do with the matter.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: I wish to be brief and not to indulge in polemics. No one would accuse the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of being sinister but I must say that I was not entirely reassured by his reassurance as to the diversification of the operations of the Coal Board. I was not at all reassured when he said that it dated back to 1946, which was not a particularly happy year in our national history.
The Minister mentioned a number of private enterprises with which the

National Coal Board has connections. I do not think that I should have intervened in this debate had not the right hon. Gentleman mentioned J. H. Sankey & Son. I have no interest in this firm. Indeed, I have no financial interest in any of these matters. However, constituents of mine, particularly those concerned in supplying the building trade, were alarmed when the Coal Board, last summer, acquired its interest in J. H. Sankey & Son, which has nothing to do with manufacturing mining machinery, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Rhondda, East (Mr. G. Elfed Davies), but is concerned with the supply of solid fuel heaters. I ask the Minister to accept that there is great concern among many medium and small enterprises, to whose value to the community Lord Robens has paid tribute, at this transaction, and they are wondering where it will all stop. The Parliamentary Secretary, who is on the Government Front Bench, knows that I pursued this matter by Parliamentary Question.
I do not want to approach this subject in an ideological manner. Whether the economy is controlled or free or mixed, as ours is, competition is necessary and desirable and the need for competition is sometimes mentioned even by hon. Members opposite. But competition should be fair. It should not be such as to give rise to the apprehension that the competition of nationalised concerns with smaller private businesses will lose them the chance of competing and thus eliminate competition. The diversification of any nationalised industry, particularly the coal industry, must be limited by what is right for the general health of a competitive national economy and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) said, by the technical ability of the nationalised industries to discharge these other functions.

Mr. Edward Milne: I do not want to detain the Committee very long, but I should take up one or two remarks of the hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison). To talk about freedom for private enterprise and of the contact of the National Coal Board with private enterprise industries seems to ignore the fact that for a number of years the Board has been subsidising private industry. If it had not been for the decision taken


between 1954 and 1956 to have the output of the Board in 1965 raised to 240 million tons, many of the difficulties which we are facing may not have been encountered.
When we hear talk about the industry being subsidised, we should remember that in many ways it has been subsidising private industry. Take, for example, the time when American coal had to be imported and £70 million of coal industry money was used to sell American coal at British prices to industrialists in Britain to keep she price level. I am not arguing the merits or demerits of this policy because it is not relevant to the matter that we are discussing. But it indicates that, contrary to what hon. Members opposite have said, the £70 million used to bolster the entry of American coal into this country was a subsidy to private enterprise and a drain on the Coal Board's resources.

Mr. Box: Despite the plausible explanation of the Minister, I support the Amendment. It is fair to say that the powers given in paragraphs (c) and (e) of Clause 1 are as far-reaching and all-embracing as any proposed for a nationalised industry. It does not matter that similar provisions were included in a Bill passed during the period of office of a Conservative Government. There is a vast difference in the policies of the Labour Party and Conservative Party on nationalisation.
5.45 p.m.
Although a Conservative Government gave the Railways Board certain powers in 1962, that does not materially alter the fact that we should examine the powers granted to the Coal Board by this Government with the utmost suspicion.
In examining the Bill we must remember that it is mainly designed to give substantial relief for the past losses or past indiscretions of one of the most unsuccessful nationalised industries in this country. It is little short of sheer impertinence for this Government, especially in the light of the recent confirmation by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that if the Labour Government had a bigger majority they would extend their powers of nationalisation to include powers to acquire any under-

taking, to invest or to take over any company.
Whether right hon. and hon. Members opposite like it or not, this can be construed as a possible extension of nationalisation. Whether it is by the back door, insidious or creeping, I am not prepared to argue. But we are here to keep an eye on the Government, and that we intend to do to the best of our ability. Possibly the Minister is responsible to a large extent for his apparent reticence in putting clearly what he intended in the Bill. There is virtually no explanation of paragraphs (c) and (d) of Clause 1 in the Explanatory Memorandum, and one has to look very carefully to unearth any reference to them in the White Paper which was recently published. There are times when we could be excused for wondering whether the Minister was trying to make Lord Robens into the Charlie Clore of the coal industry.
However many reassurances we have had from the benches opposite, the Minister is bound to admit that no guarantee is given in the Bill that the activities of the Coal Board will be confined to those ancillary to coal, although he has told us that that is the case this afternoon. If that is what he means, why not say it in the Bill and be clear and concise about it? We have already seen the impact of the entry of nationalised industries into the takeover market. We saw it in 1963 when Richard Thomas & Baldwins was authorised to outbid Stewarts & Lloyds for Whitehead Iron and Steel. The principles are the same. [Laughter.] This causes great amusement among right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Front Bench. We know that a Conservative Government gave authority for this—[Hon. Members: "Oh."] The Committee will agree that they did so after the most careful thought and investigation——

Mr. J. J. Mendelson: That makes it worse.

Mr. Box: —and after several hotly contested debates on the Floor of the House. Because it would have caused a great deal of damage to Richard Thomas & Baldwins if the take-over had not been permitted, it was allowed by a Conservative Government. We must remember that it was the long-term policy of the


then Conservative Government, and now of the Conservative Party in opposition, eventually to denationalise both Richard Thomas & Baldwins and Whiteheads Iron and Steel, which was taken over. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why did they not do it?"] The amount involved was £10 million. This met with very considerable criticism from right hon. and hon. Members opposite who were then in opposition. I wonder whether that acquisition can be said to have resolved Richard Thomas & Baldwin's problems, because we know that losses are mounting very rapidly at the present time unfortunately, and we have read recently also of a certain amount of redundancy in that industry. At the time of this takeover bid, which was in circumstances which could pertain now, I submit——

Mr. William Hamilton: On a point of order. What have Richard Thomas & Baldwins and the steel industry got to do with this coal Bill?

The Temporary Chairman: This debate has, admittedly, gone very wide, in view of the fact that many hon. Members have wished to compare the various paragraphs of subsection (2) of the Clause as they relate to other nationalised industries. Perhaps it was inevitable that other nationalised industries should have been mentioned. However, I would ask all hon. Members to remember that this Bill essentially is concerned with the coal industry.

Mr. Box: I of course take note of what you say, Sir Harry, but I would respectfully submit that this was an absolute example of a nationalised industry taking over a private company, and that is, after all, what we are discussing in the context of this Bill.

Mr. Stones: Will the hon. Member give way?

Mr. Box: No. I will not give way. The hon. Member will have plenty of opportunity to make a speech. He has made interruption after interruption. Why on earth he cannot get up and make his own speech I do not know. I think he must be afraid.
At the time of that particular takeover the then President of the Board of Trade referred to it as a rather sordid story, and the hon. Gentleman the Mem-

ber for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot)— I am sorry he is out of the Chamber—called it an original act of jungle aggression perpetrated by Stewart and Lloyd's. But perhaps it was best summed up by that rather voluble young man the Member for Aberavon (Mr. John Morris), now the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power, who, during the debate then, said:
This can be done only once. If a situation of this nature arose again"——

Mr. William Hamilton: On a point of order. I really must insist that if the hon. Member is going to be allowed to pursue this argument on steel we must surely reserve the right on this Amendment to compare other nationalised industries—for example, such as the Army, the Navy, the Air Force——

Mr. Stones: The Post Office.

Mr. Hamilton: —and the Post Office, and certain other nationalised industries.

The Temporary Chairman: I would ask the hon. Member to allow the Chair to decide whether other hon. Members are in or out of order. I am listening very carefully to what the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box) is saying, and I am hoping that very shortly he will switch from steel to coal.

Mr. Box: Again I would submit, Sir Harry, that these points are absolutely relevant, because they would apply to the coal industry just as they applied in the other case. That case is a practical example of what happened in the steel industry.
To start the quotation again—it is a very short one—talking of that bid the hon. Gentleman said:
This can be done only once. If a situation of this nature arose again and the other competitors knew that the Government were backing the natonalised concern, then the prices would go even higher."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th February, 1963; Vol. 672, c. 104]
Well, I suggest this is a very real danger and that it did of course apply more recently where the National Coal Board——

Mr. John Morris: Does the hon. Gentleman not recall that that transaction became a very expensive transaction indeed for the last Government? White-head's having been sold back as a private


company at a figure, I believe, of £3 million or £4 million, it was eventually re-purchased at a figure slightly over £10 million. Even after making allowance for new capital investment which had taken place, it was a very expensive transaction indeed.

The Temporary Chairman: Before the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box) resumes, I think I really must ask the Committee now not to go too deeply into the details of one specific company in another industry. If hon. Members wish to raise particular points which occurred in other industries, they may, but generally, and they should avoid getting bogged down in details which have no relevance whatsoever to this Bill.

Mr. Box: The Parliamentary Secretary has pinpointed the danger where a nationalised industry, backed by the Government, is making a bid for a private company; and he said that this might force the price up. Here I agree with him. I think it is one of the dangers in this Bill.
I was going to get off steel, you will be pleased to know, Sir Harry, and recall a more recent bid made jointly by the National Coal Board and the British Paint Corporation for a company called Wailes Dove Bitumastic. They started bidding at 17s. 6d. and subsequently put up the figure, because of competition, to a figure of 19s. 6d. Despite the increase in the bid, which, I suggest, might have been as a result of the fact that people in competition knew the Government were partly interested, at any rate, through the Coal Board, they still failed to acquire the company in question, and when the acquisition had been confirmed by the opposing company, immediately the shares fell to 13s. 6d. I am trying to suggest that the fact that the bidding companies, one of which was the National Coal Board, had to pay up to 19s. 6d. for a share which very rapidly fell back to 13s. 6d. may be confirmation of what the Parliamentary Secretary was saying.
Finally, I wonder, if the terms of this Clause were taken to their ultimate, how long it would be before private companies would perhaps have to make their staff join one of the National Coal Board's workers' unions—how long it would be before they, too, would be subscribing

to what, I am afraid, is the miserable record of unofficial strikes and absenteeism.
I suggest that the electorate of this country and the Government of this country have rejected nationalisation as a policy, and I therefore suggest that we reject this Clause and accept the Amendment.

Mr. Swain: The hon. Member made a reference to unofficial strikes and absenteeism in the mining industry. I wonder if his constituents are aware that his attendance record in this House is only 60 per cent.—if he challenges that I will prove it to him—and his absenteeism in this House is 40 per cent. How can he talk of absenteeism? He himself should not do what he disapproves.

Mr. Peyton: On a point of order. Admittedly this has been a rather wide-ranging debate, but I really do suggest that the hon. Gentleman in raising this kind of point is inviting all sorts of things which can be said on both sides. But this is really very unusual, for one hon. Member to make this kind of personal attack on another. I think it outrageous.

Mr. Swain: The hon. Member for Yeovil's is 30.

The Temporary Chairman: Order. I must ask all hon. Members, if they will, to try to keep to the real matter in hand, which is, what is contained in the various paragraphs of this subsection as proposed by the Amendments to he left out. Therefore, I would ask all hon. Members, however much provoked, not to pick up the tail end of a speech and start a completely new topic altogether. They should, if possible, avoid doing so.

Mr. Box: In all fairness, Sir Harry, I must completely and utterly refute what the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Swain) has said. It is completely and utterly untrue from start to finish. I would imagine that my attendance record is very much nearer 80 per cent.

The Temporary Chairman: Order. [Interruption.] I must ask the hon. Member for Rhondda, East (Mr. G. Elfed Davies) not to speak from a sitting position when I am trying to give a ruling.


I would ask the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box) to be very careful about his choice of adjectives. I think he used the word "untrue"—suggesting that an hon. Member was not telling the truth. I think he must withdraw that.

Mr. Box: Sir Harry, that was a very inaccurate and untrue allegation which was made against me, and, of course, I sought the earliest opportunity to refute it, but if I have used any form of words which offends the Chair, then, naturally, I withdraw it unreservedly.

6.0 p.m.

Mr. Swain: I withdraw 40 per cent,, Sir Harry, and substitute 39½ per cent.

The Temporary Chairman: The hon. Member must have a little respect for the Chair. That remark was not in order.

Mr. Dan Jones: The only point that I wish to make at this stage is to object to the fact that in all these debates relating to the mining industry, the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box) pillories the miner. There has not been one debate in which he has not taken it upon himself to say that whatever disabilities there might be in the industry —and I do not agree that they are many —they must be due to the miners. It is a most unfair observation for the hon. Member to continue to make.
The hon. Member knows nothing at all about coal mining. He knows even less about the hazardous tasks of miners. I take the view that when an hon. Member knows very little about a subject, he should not pontificate as the hon. Member does.

The Temporary Chairman: Order. I ask the hon. Member to recall that we are debating Amendments and not whether another hon. Member has knowledge of a subject. I ask the hon. Member, if he wishes to address the Committee, to confine himself to the Amendment in hand.

Mr. Jones: If an hon. Member makes an observation, Sir Harry, it cannot be too unfair for another hon. Member to reply. I do not want to pursue that, however, except to say that if the hon. Member would like an opportunity of knowing what this work is, I extend to him a most cordial invitation to come down to the Rhondda or to a mine in

Lancashire with me, so that he may have some understanding of the nature of the work.
The hon. Member sought to say that if the mining industry could be kept purely to coal mining and ancillary purposes, that would be an imposition that he would put upon the Minister and, I take it, the National Coal Board. Does not the hon. Member know that the National Coal Board has vast research agencies, for which it pays handsome sums of money? Is the hon. Member saying to the Government, and in turn to the National Coal Board, that if those researches bring forward a project which is not entirely connected with coal but is related only in some indirect way to the mining industry, it must be handed over to private enterprise? That is asking for an imposition which is quite unfair. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will reject that plea.

Mr. Peyton: Neither the Minister nor any hon. Member on the benches opposite should be too sensitive when confronted with an Amendment of this kind. The question with which we are concerned is whether the Bill adds to the Board's powers. The Minister has answered categorically by saying, "No". I feel inclined to ask the other obvious question. If it is not adding to the Board's powers, why have this provision?
I am not entirely swept away by the argument that because a Clause appeared in a Bill dealing with transport, it should necessarily appear in every other Bill in which a place can be found for it on later occasions. This habit is dear to the Establishment, no matter what Government are in power, but this is not a matter in which we should say that because we have done it once, we should always welcome such a Clause again.
A number of hon. Members opposite have shown themselves to be sensitive to any suspicion as to their motives from this side of the Committee. There is nothing underhand about their motives. They have put us on notice that they intend to extend nationalisation. This is a perfectly fair thing for them to do. We object to the measures that they might propose and we consider them to be unwise.
Hon. Members opposite must accept that we do not agree with them about


this. They told us at length in the Queens Speech that it was the Government's intention to extend the area of public ownership. The 1955 Election manifesto of the Socialist Party contained these words:
We shall bring sections of chemical and machine tools industries into public ownership. Where necessary, we shall start new public enterprises.
"The New Britain of 1964 said that the
nationalised industries…will be encouraged, with the removal of the present restrictions placed upon them, to diversify and move into new fields: for example, the railways' workshops will be free to seek export markets, and the National Coal Board to manufacture the machinery and equipment it needs".
In moving our Amendments, we wanted to know the Government's intentions and why this provision was included in the Bill. We were told that this was not adding to the Board's powers, but we still have not been told, if that is the case, why the Clause is included.
One other point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn). I realise that if anybody in the House of Commons starts talking about coal subsidies, it is a matter which engenders heat. It is a question of a terminology. Undoubtedly—let us face it—the coal industry has enjoyed a measure of protection and, in my view and that of the last Administration, for very good reasons. It is not right for hon. Members opposite to speak as if the coal industry had not had, and does not still have, considerable protection. It does. There is a 2d. per gallon discrimatory tax upon oil which is a measure of protection for the coal industry. Secondly, there is a ban on imports of coal, particularly American coal. These are measures for which the last Government were responsible, and I quite agree with them. But do not let any of us deny that they are measures of protection given, quite rightly in my view, to the coal industry.
It should also be remembered that the Bill which we are discussing gives an immense measure of assistance to the industry. I know that "subsidy" is a dirty word, but I am quite prepared to use another word if hon. Members opposite wish and to say that the coal industry has a substantial measure of protection and by the Bill is being given

a substantial further measure of relief. That cannot be denied.
I see no point in detaining the Committee further on these Amendments except to ask the Minister brifley to add to his answer on this one point. If the Clause, about which we have been reasonably suspicious, does not add to the Board's powers, why put it in?

Mr. Frederick Lee: The immediate answer to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) is that this is a form of wording which had its beginnings in the Transport Act, 1962, and has the advantage for those reading it, that instead of making a blanket provision for capital advances, it gives details of how the capital is to be used. That is a good thing.
I can well believe that in the courts, for example, the wording of the 1946 Act would provide ample scope for legal differences about its meaning. Therefore I should have thought that, in line with the arguments we heard on the first Amendment, we should not be hidebound simply because a certain form of financing has been operative in an industry, if there is a better, newer and more modern form which can be developed. The subsection spells out in more detail the same powers as were contained in a rather blanket way in the 1946 Act.
If hon. Members would look at the 1946 Act, they will see that the National Coal Board has very wide powers, far wider in this respect than we have been discussing and far wider than any other nationalised industry. As yet, it has not used some of those powers. I do not want to spell out the whole details, because hon. Members can read it for themselves if they look at the Act. But let me quote section 1(2)(e):
any activities which can advantageously be carried on by the Board with a view to making the best use of any of the assets vested in them by this Act.
That is a pretty wide power in itself, and it is only one of a number of powers given to the Board.
In addition, many of the functions that it is now carrying out are functions that it derived from the owners prior to nationalisation. I may be wrong, but I have an idea that when we first nationalised steel we found that we had also nationalised Smith's Crisps. Therefore,


the taking over of an industry which has a main, specific purpose does not of itself exclude the other activities of those who previously owned it.
Hon. Members will find if they look through the activities of the Board that it is very logical. I am not saying that the previous owners were wrong to do it, because it was a logical development of their main type of product. The Board now has 51 central workshops which maintain and repair mining machinery; some of these supply outside customers with castings in competition with private firms. That is a power which has been vested in the Board ever since nationalisation. It has 60 brickworks. In some parts of the country, it has a very considerable agency for the distribution of coal. In my own area in the north-west they have a very big distributive agency indeed. A great many of those activities are natural developments either of its present functions or what it took over at the time of vesting. Those are the explanations of a number of the activities it now carries out.
It has been said that the kind of diversification we are allegedly going ahead with in the Bill is back-door nationalisation. When we decide to do any more nationalisation, I can assure the Committee that we shall not do it by the back door.

Mr. Peyton: May I say at once that we are extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that undertaking. May I give him notice that, on the basis of that undertaking, we will very willingly withdraw the Amendments, if he has finished his remarks.

Mr. Lee: I have not quite finished, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for admitting that in debate he and his hon. Friends have been worsted and now wish to get out as quickly as they can.
Hon. Members will recall that in the course of the Gracious Speech the Government announced that we intend to introduce legislation for the purpose of diversifying the nationalised industries. We are not seeking to use this Bill to legislate for these purposes.
I do not want to go into all the very interesting and wide discussion that has taken place on the Amendments. The

hon. Member for Yeovil took up the point about subsidies, and he substituted the word "protections". He was right to say that there is protection in the form of 2d. a gallon on oil. What we must be clear about is that although there is protection of a sort for the coal industry, it does not mean that the coal industry is unique in that respect. There is a very great deal of protection for a whole number of industries in the private sector. Steel itself is protected, and the hon. Gentleman made a point about steel.
6.15 p.m.
I am not arguing that it is wrong to protect, but it would be wrong to give the impression that the coal industry is unique because it has this kind of protection and that it is an isolated instance. As a matter of fact, there is a great deal of protection for many British industries.
One of the reasons why we are discussing today the need to wipe out or write down much of the Coal Board's debts is that it was not permitted to function commercially in the days when it could have earned a great deal more revenue, had it been permitted to use the mechanism of the market.

Mr. Peyton: If the right hon. Gentleman is going to prolong the argument, he is perfectly right when he says that the industry has been interfered with. The White Paper says so quite clearly. But can he tell us why the Government are doing so again now?

Mr. Lee: I am giving reasons why the Government have to do it now. In view of the wide range of debate that we have had, it is right and proper that one should mention the historic reasons why we are now bringing forward the Bill.
It is unfair to compare the coal industry with private enterprise which would charge what the market would sustain when, because of the social implications, successive Governments quite legitimately and I believe quite rightly, did not permit the coal industry to charge what it could undoubtedly have got during the period of a seller's market.
I am glad to hear that the hon. Gentlemen opposite are going to withdraw the Amendments. In the course of the debate, we have shown that their accusations of


back-door nationalisation or of sinister intent were utterly misplaced and misconceived. It has been an interesting debate and one which I am very pleased to have been able to have, because it illustrates that the content of the Bill, particularly the Clause that we are discussing, is highly relevant to the whole objective of producing a new, viable and healthy coal industry. It is for that reason and no other, especially no sinister reason, that we are asking the Committee to reject the Amendments.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: It has been an extremely useful debate but, in view of the Minister's repeated statements that the Clause does not add to the powers of the Board and that there will be no backdoor nationalisation, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

The Temporary Chairman: We come next to Amendment No. 6, and I think it will be for the convenience of the Committee to take with it Amendment No. 7, in page 2, line 21, to leave out "£700,000,000" and to insert "£650,000,000", and Amendment No. 8, in page 2, line 22, to leave out "£750,000,000" and to insert "£700,000,000".

Mr. Michael Alison: I beg to move Amendment No. 6, in page 2, line 21, to leave out from "exceed" to the end of line 23 and to insert
£650,000.000:
Provided that the Minister may by order increase this sum or sums by instalments of £50,000.000 up to £750,000,000".
My hon. Friend gave notice in the debate last Thursday that he would be tabling an Amendment to reduce the borrowing powers by £100 million. He said, quite frankly, that this is an explanatory Amendment. That is precisely what it is: an Amendment on which we shall ask questions. Perhaps I should warn the Parliamentary Secretary, if he is to answer this part of the debate, that I shall want to refer, with his and the Chair's permission, to Cmnd. 2624, which sets out the proposed loans from the Consolidated Fund for the year 1965–66, as it is relevant.
I thank the Parliamentary Secretary very much for the trouble he took to reply so promptly to the points I raised in last Thursday's debate, thus enabling

me to have the information in time for today.
The Amendment would provide that it is when the Board's borrowing has reached not £750 million but £650 million, that the Minister should have to come to the House for an Order to enable the Board to borrow the balancing sum of £100 million up to the overall total of £750 million. We do not dispute that level, but we want to make certain that the right hon. Gentleman has to come to the House when the level of £650 million is reached in order to proceed to borrow the extra £100 million. This can be done in two different instalments of £50 million.
If the Committee considers the figures involved—they are set out clearly in the Bill and on page 8 of the White Paper which accompanies it—it will agree that this is a thoroughly reasonable Amendment. It gives the Board £100 million in hand, which it can borrow without having to come to the House. That is to say, £100 million is the figure separating the new amount which the Coal Board carries as its residual debt of £545 million from the £650 million which we wish to set as the limit on borrowing before the Minister has to come to the House for an Order.
The reason for my belief that this is a reasonable Amendment is represented by the three sets of figures at the bottom of page 8 of the White Paper accompanying the Bill. The Government have set out on that page the Board's borrowing requirements, which add up to £750 million. I am sorry that we are looking at this with a microscope, but we have been looking at the Board's affairs hitherto with a telescope and it is right that we should give them some microscopic examination.
These sets of figures show that the sum of new investment in ancillary activities is £50 million, provision for possible deficits is £30 million and for all other contingencies £35 million, which add up to little more than the £100 million which the Coal Board can borrow without the Minister having to seek further powers.
There is a very interesting item to which I particularly want to ask for a little information. On page 8 of the White Paper—it is not referred to anywhere else, so far as I can see—we are told that borrowings after March, 1965


and allowance for seasonal movements in working capital total £90 million.
The Parliamentary Secretary will notice that this figure of £90 million is almost the same as the £100 million which we seek to reduce in the Board's borrowing powers before the Minister has to come to the House for another Order——

The Temporary Chairman: The hon. Member keeps referring to page 8 of the White Paper. Is it on page 6?

Mr. Alison: I am referring to Cmnd. 2805, to the column of figures at the bottom of page 8.
The Parliamentary Secretary will notice that the £100 million by which we are seeking to reduce the Board's borrowing powers before another Order has to be sought is almost balanced by an equivalent to the mysterious figure, on which we shall want some information, of £90 million of borrowings after March, 1965. This is a mystery. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to cast some light on it. It is described as "Borrowings and Allowance for Seasonal Movements in Working Capital". How much of the £90 million represents seasonal movements in working capital? We should be very surprised if it is a large sum.
The Board has not, in the past, required very large sums for this purpose. Cmnd. 2624, page 6, shows that, in the last two years, the Board has required no positive sums at all for seasonal movements of working capital: indeed, it has been able to provide itself with items and finance some of its capital expenditure out of this.
From the description of loans from the Consolidated Fund on page 6 of Cmnd. 2624, it will be evident that the Chancellor of the Exchequer's estimates provide that, in 1965–66, the period we are discussing, the Board has to find whatever sum is necessary to meet changes in working capital. There is a neat line drawn in the column headed "Changes in working capital", so, on the figures I have given, the allowance for movements in working capital of £90 million must contain a very small element of working capital.
One would expect it to be quite small, because working capital is self-liquidating to some extent. Therefore, the balance of that £90 million, if a large part of it is not working capital—I do not think it can be—must be for unspecified capital investment. This is what we want to probe and this is the reason we seek to reduce the borrowing powers.
It is important and desirable that we should be told in considerable detail about the capital projects which the Board is contemplating for the future. We were told last Thursday of the large sum of £380 million which the Board proposes to finance from internal sources by colliery projects. We have been told about the £50 million and more which the Board needs to finance out of ancillary activities, but we want to know what capital expenditure is covered by this £90 million. It is something of a mystery. Is it exactly the same as the Chancellor's estimate of borrowing for the Coal Board in 1965–66 of £93 million, which is, as I said, placed in the column outlining the loans from the Consolidated Fund?
Is it the same, or is it something additional? If it is additional, the Coal Board this year are taking powers to borrow not only the £90 million set out in the White Paper but £93 million in addition which the Chancellor budgeted for in his Budget Speech. That makes a total of about £180 million, which is a very large capital sum indeed. The main question we want answered is, will the Board borrow this £90 million exactly as set out in Cmnd. 2624? When the hon. Gentleman answers that, perhaps he will note that Cmnd. 2624, in itemising the loans from the Consolidated Fund, makes it clear that the £90 million is capital to be raised from internal sources. If the £93 million specified by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech—as set out in Command 2624—is the same as the £90 million referred to in the White Paper as part of the sum that the Coal Board will be permitted to borrow, the amount which the Board has to raise from internal sources should be reduced by £40 million, according to the provisions of the Bill. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will clear up this mystery. If he can do it satisfactorily we shall be quite happy to withdraw the Amendment.

6.30 p.m.

Mr. Peyton: Perhaps I may clarify and supplement the argument put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Alison). I shall put the argument the wrong way round and deal with Amendments Nos. 7 and 8, which are also being discussed. They set out to reduce the borrowing power by £50 million. This is a very difficult Bill to amend clearly in order to show what is intended, but out intention here is to reduce the borrowing power by £50 million, that being the amount relating to ancillary investment, particularly in smokeless fuels and benzole. I do not want to go into detail on this, but I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary can tell us how much has already been invested in smokeless fuels.
The Coal Board has produced a very high-class fuel, but the price at which it is sold makes it very much of a luxury fuel. 'This is a very dangerous field of operations because there is the possibility of the Coal Board's being led on to make increasing investments in what, although an excellent fuel, is likely to be a very expensive one. This could involve losses in the future. I repeat what I said in the Second Reading debate, namely, that for the Coal Board to embark—as it is embarking at the moment—on a benzole refining project seems to be unwise. I do not want to damn the thing completely, but at a time when others are seeing fit to leave this field it could be highly unwise for the Coal Board to be so audacious as to rush in to fill the vacancies.
I do not wish there to be any misunderstanding about the Amendment. It is one on which, if the Government cannot meet us, I would certainly advise my hon. Friends to divide the Committee. My hon. Friend has already made clear—and it is made clear in the White Paper —that the Coal Board's need for capital investment over the period to March, 1971 includes £380 million for colliery investment. We are told that it is the very laudable intention of the Coal Board to generate those funds from its own activities. In other words, all the borrowing is required for ancillary activities.
We do not believe that in those circumstances it is too much to ask that the Minister should have to report progress to Parliament at a point £50 million

earlier on. I shall not make a long speech, but I must tell the Parliamentary Secretary that this is a question to which my hon. Friends and I attach great weight.

Mr. John Morris: I want to deal first with Amendment No. 6. This is the Amendment to which the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) attaches substantial significance. If it were accepted, the Government would have to ask the House for further borrowing powers at a point £50 million sooner than is proposed in the Bill. If the hon. Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Alison) will examine the proposals contained in the White Paper, he will find that after reconstruction the Board will be left with a new debt of £545 million on 28th March. I will not at this stage go into details about the calculation of the £750 million—which is the maximum set out in the Bill—mentioned in the White Paper. But such is the reasonal pattern of the Board's operations that there are substantial fluctuations in its need for capital.
As an indication of that I should say that the total borrowings of the Board fell, on this analysis, to £527 million in May, 1965. That is also set out in the White Paper. After allowing for this year's net investment the peak, which is expected to be reached in February, 1966, will be as high as £635 million. Estimating that the Board will need £635 million in February next year, if the limit of borrowing is lowered by the acceptance of the Amendment the Board will be left next year with borrowing powers up to £650 million. In those circumstances, the Government might have to seek authority for a new Order very soon after the Bill comes into effect, and certainly before the House rises for the Summer Recess. It would not be prudent for any Government to allow themselves to come so close to the maximum figure before seeking authority for further borrowing from the House.
I appreciate the hon. Member's wish to have as close a scrutiny as possible of the extension of the borrowing powers under the terms of the Bill, but, because of the point that I have made about fluctuations in the Board's need for capital, the imposition of this new restriction would be a waste of Parliament's time, because we should have to come


back far too soon after the passing of the Bill to seek new authority. We have sought to adopt the principle of the last Government, which was that in respect of the presenting of an interim Order the matter should come back for the scrutiny of the House, and for a debate on the Order itself, within about three years from the passing of the original Act.

Mr. Alison: I am still trying to pursue this elusive, mysterious figure which the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave us at the time of the Budget this year—this £93 million in respect of capital for fixed investments. It is nothing to do with changes in working capital; it is specified as sums to be raised in fixed investment partly internally and partly by borrowing. I want to know whether it is the same figure as the £90 million referred to in page 8 of the White Paper, or whether it is additional. If it is additional, we shall be giving the Minister power to raise over £180 million in the current year. I should like to know whether these figures are in respect of the same item.

Mr. Morris: I do not think that the hon. Member has fully understood the position. Nothing additional is sought here. The figure of £53 million to which he referred in the Second Reading debate, which is mentioned in Cmnd. 2624, relates to the increase in borrowing from 31st March, 1965 to 31st March, 1966. The figure of £90 million in Cmnd. 2805 relates to the annual seasonal movement of working capital, largely stock movements, etc. They make up between £68 million and £70 million, but the balance, I concede, is a matter of investment.
The principle we have sought to follow on interim limits is that within the three-year period from the passing of the borrowing Measure, the Minister should seek a new Order so as to go to the final limit. Obviously, as the industry is moving through a period of reconstruction, both capital and physical, we cannot give specific assurances about that kind of period, but the effect of accepting Amendment No. 6 would be that we would have to come back to the House very soon after the passing of the Bill, which would be an unreasonable imposition on Parliament's precious time.
The hon. Member for Yeovil also asked about the £50 million for investment in

ancillary activities. As he knows, the Board has very wide powers in regard to activities ancillary to the getting of coal, and activities connected with assets possessed by the previous owners. Primarily, it is for the Board to decide what use to make of those powers. Those assets are very extensive. They are now worth some £150 million, some of which will be written off—including £16 million for coke ovens, as set out in the White Paper. Nevertheless, the Board has very substantial interests in this field. Its coke ovens produce 25 per cent. of the nation's hard coke. It manufactures smokeless fuels. Its workshops have been referred to, and it also operates brickworks.
The hon. Member asks specifically about the Board's benzole activities. The Board's coke ovens are substantial producers of benzole, most of which in the past has been disposed of in the form of crude benzole. But with the entry of the petroleum industry into the benzole trade, with an oil-based product of higher purity, the Board must now refine to a higher standard in order to protect its own by-product market. This can be best achieved by centralising refining at modern plants large enough to operate on a commercial basis. That is the position. There is no question of the Board entering a risk venture for its own sake, and I do not see why the Board should be denied the finance necessary to carry out such an important project. The project mentioned in the White Paper is one in which Stewarts and Lloyds are entering jointly with the Board, which means that, if there are risks, they are risks which seem reasonable to private industry as well as to the Board.
The hon. Member for Yeovil also asked about smokeless fuel grades. The Board is introducing three new smokeless fuels: Homefire for open fires, Roomheat for closed or openable stoves and Multi-heat for domestic boilers and closed stoves. The money estimated to be invested in the new plant is £12 million for Coventry, when completed—of which £10¼ million has been spent to date; £3·3 million for Markham, most of which has been spent; and £0·5 million for Multiheat at Cardiff, where, I understand, the job has been completed. I think that I have dealt with all the points raised by hon. Members opposite.

Mr. Peyton: Whilst I could press the hon. Member a little further on the subject of smokeless fuels, I shall not do so now. I only say that I do not agree with his suggestion that it would be a waste of Parliament's valuable time to come back with this matter at an earlier date. I feel strongly to the contrary, and so do my hon. Friends. That leaves us no alternative but to divide the Committee.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Morris: While I am quite willing for the hon. Gentleman to divide the Committee if he so wishes, I think that he fails to understand the principle that has been followed in other borrowing measures for the publicly-owned industries. It is a principle which the previous Government persuaded the House to accept. It was that in a borrowing Bill there should be two limits—an interim Limit and a final limit. The suggestion put to the House was that the provision should be so phased that the affairs of the industry came back to the House for examination, as to the interim limit, within three years. For the reasons

I have set out, Amendment No. 6 is quite unrealistic because we now estimate that the £635 million mark will be reached in February of next year, so that we would have to come back to the House within a very short period of the passing of the Bill. If that is the hon. Gentleman's wish, I can understand it, but it is quite contrary to what he, as a member of the last Administration, persuaded the House was a reasonable period of time.

Mr. Peyton: The hon. Gentleman has still not understood my major point. We are conducting a massive financial operation in writing off £415 million of the Board's capital, and it is reasonable that the House should want an early opportunity to look at it again. The hon. Gentleman's own arguments make me even more enthusiastic to divide the Committee.

Question put, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 138, Noes 115.

Division No. 9.]
AYES
[6.46 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Garrett, W. E.
Mellish, Robert


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Gregory, Arnold
Mendelson, J. J.


Armstrong, Ernest
Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)
Milne, Edward (Blyth)


Atkinson, Norman
Hale, Leslie
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)


Bacon, Miss Alice
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Morris, Charles (Openshaw)


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Hamilton, William (West Fife)
Morris, John (Aberavon)


Beaney, Alan
Hamling, William (Woolwich, W.)
Neal, Harold


Bence, Cyril
Hannan, William
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip(Derby, S.)


Binns, John
Harper, Joseph
O'Malley, Brian


Bishop, E. S.
Hazell, Bert
Padley, Walter


Blenklnsop, Arthur
Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)


Boston, Terence
Horner, John
Palmer, Arthur


Bowden, Rt. Hn. H. W. (Leics S.W.)
Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)
Panned, Rt. Hn. Charles


Boyden, James
Howarth, Robert L. (Bolton, E.)
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Bradley, Tom
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Pentland, Norman


Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; Fbury)
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Perry, Ernest G.


Buchan, Norman (Renfrewshire)
Hynd, John (Attercliffe)
Popplewell, Ernest


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (H'bn&amp;St.P'cras,S.)
Probert, Arthur


Carmichael, Neil
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Randall, Harry


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Rankin, John


Chapman, Donald
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Redhead, Edward


Coleman, Donald
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Rees, Merlyn


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Cousins, Rt. Hn. Frank
Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Robinson, Rt. Hn. K.(St. Pancras, N.)


Crossman, Rt. Hn. R. H. S.
Lawson, George
Rose, Paul B.


Dalyell, Tarn
Leadbitter, Ted
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Darling, George
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)
Shore, Peter (Stepney)


Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Short, Rt. Hn. E. (N'c'tle-on-Tyne, C.)


Davies, S. o. (Merthyr)
Lipton, Marcus
Short, Mrs. Renée(W'hampton,N.E.)


Diamond, Rt. Hn. John
Lomas, Kenneth
Silkin, John (Deptford)


Doig, Peter
Loughlin, Charles
Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)


Donnelly, Desmond
MacColl, James
Small, William


Driberg, Tom
Mclnnes, James
Snow, Julian


Dunn, James A.
McKay, Mrs. Margaret
Stones, William


Dunnett, jack
Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Swain, Thomas


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
McLeavy, Frank
Symonds, J. B.


Ensor, David
MacPherson, Malcolm
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Finch, Harold (Bedwellty)
Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigs)
Thornton, Ernest


Floud, Bernard
Mallalieu, J.P.W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Tinn, James


Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Mason, Roy
Urwin, T. W.




Walden, Brian (All Saints)
Wilkins, W. A.
Willis, George (Edinburgh, E.)


Warbey, William
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Wyatt, Woodrow


Wells, William (Walsall, N.)
Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)



White, Mrs. Eirene
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Whitiock, William
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)
Mr. Ifor Davies and Mr. Howie.




NOES


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Gammans, Lady
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)
Gardner, Edward
Nugent, Rt. Hn. Sir Richard


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Gibson-Watt, David
Osborn, John (Hallam)


Amery, Rt. Hn, Julian
Giles, Rear-Admiral Morgan
Peel, John


Anstruther-Gray, Rt. Hn. Sir W.
Gresham Cooke, R.
Percival, Ian


Awdry, Daniel
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Peyton, John


Balniel, Lord
Griffiths, Peter (Smethwick)
Pym. Francis


Batsford, Brian
Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, H.W.)
Rawiinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter


Biffen, John
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Ronton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Biggs-Davison, John
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Bingham, R. M.
Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Russell, Sir Ronald


Blaker, Peter
Hawkins, Paul
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Box, Donald
Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel
Scott-Hopkins, James


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Hobson, Rt. Hn. Sir John
Shepherd, William


Bromley-Davenport,Lt.-Col.Sir Walter
Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'd &amp; Chiswick)


Brooke, Rt. Hn. Henry
Hopkins, Aian
Smyth, Rt. Hn. Brig. Sir John


Buck, Antony
Kerr, Sir Hamilton (Cambridge)
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Bullus, Sir Eric
Kershaw, Anthony
Steel, David (Roxburgh)


Burden, F. A.
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Studholme, Sir Henry


Campbell, Gordon
Kirk, Peter
Summers, Sir Spencer


Carlisle, Mark
Lagden, Godfrey
Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow.Cathcart)


Channon, H. P. G.
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Chichester-Clark, R.
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Thomas, Sir Leslie (Canterbury)


Cooke, Robert
Longden, Gilbert
Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Conway)


Corfield, F. V.
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon,S.)


Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)
MacArthur, Ian
Thorneycroft, Rt. Hn. Peter


Curran, Charles
McLaren, Martin
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Dance, James
Maclean, Sir
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Davies, Dr. Wyndham (Perry Barr)
McNair-Wifson, Patrick
Wall, Patrick


d'Avigdor.Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Maitland, Sir John
Webster, David


Dean, Paul
Maude, Angus
Whitelaw, William


Eden, Sir John
Mawby, Ray
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Maxwell-Hysiop, R. J.
Wise, A. R.


Errington, Sir Eric
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Eyre, Reginald
Mills, Stratum (Belfast, N.)
Woodnutt, Mark


Farr, John
More, Jasper
Younger, Hn. George


Fraser,Rt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford &amp; Stone)
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles



Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:




Mr. R. W. Elliott and Mr. Mitchell.

Mr. David Mitchell: I beg to move Amendment No. 9, in page 2, line 34, to leave out "£30,000,000" and to insert "£10,000,000".
The Government propose in the Bill to reorganise the Board's finances by wiping out the accumulated deficit of £91 million and starting with a clean slate. As the losses have doubled during the past 12 months, one can well understand the need for this. The provision in the Bill for the Board to accumulate losses of £30 million seems to be incompatible with the objective of starting with a clean slate. The Amendment seeks to reduce the amount of losses which the Board can run up to £10 million instead of £30 million.
Paragraph 2 of the White Paper refers to cost increases which the Board has suffered and which have been beyond its control. How much of these is attributable to the effects of the Government's own measures? The Budget seriously

increased the costs of industry. I am given to understand that several millions of pounds have been added to the Board's deficit because of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's actions.
Paragraph 5 of the White Paper refers to the failure of the Coal Board on past occasions to increase prices, which has led to deficits. These deficits have accumulated to £91 million. When the Minister made a point of this on Second Reading, I noticed the acclamation with which his remarks were received by his colleagues on the back benches from mining constituencies who appreciate and agree with this point. I can understand and accept their point of view that a sin is being committed by allowing deficits to run up in this way. What I cannot understand and what seems totally contradictory is that the White Paper, having said that in paragraph 5, goes on in paragraph 8 to enumerate how the Government are themselves repeating the


sin. If it was wrong to run up accumulated deficits in the past, surely it is wrong for the Government to do so now. Yet, by interference in the Board's normal workings in which the Government have indulged, price increases have been postponed from September of this year until next year, with the result that very serious accumulations of deficits are already ticking on the meter.
7.0 p.m.
This is a complete contradiction of policy and I would draw attention to the contrast and the nonsense that, on the one hand, the Government's own policies are increasing costs to the Coal Board and the cost of manufacture and, on the other hand, the Government are refusing to allow prices to rise. If this continues it cannot be long before the contradiction becomes so apparent that something must go. I hope that it will not be the taxpayers who will have to go in added accumulations of deficit in the working of the Coal Board.
Paragraph 7 of the White Paper says: In view of the current unprofitable operations the Government take a cautious view of the future earning powers of the Board's colliery assets. I can see some justification for that but if, having taken that into account, the Government say that they are making such large reductions in the capital of the coal industry to account for that cautious view, how can they then have to provide such large sums for deficits? Either they have wiped the slate clean and taken the cautious view and the Board must operate so as to make a small profit, or they have not done so and the Bill is a nonsense.
Is it true that they have made a nonsense and need to have the right to run up another deficit of £30 million, or have they provided this sum with no intention of calling on it? In that case I hope that the Government will accept the Amendment and will reduce the allowed accumulation of deficit to £10 million. The White Paper is quite specific that the Board does not seek, and the Government do not favour, a continuing subsidy for coal production. What is a proposed accumulated deficit allowance of £30 million if it is not a continuing subsidy for the coal industry? If we provide and specify a temporary deficit for the next few years and then say that this can

run up to £30 million what is it but a continuing subsidy for the next few years?
What do the Government mean by "temporary"? Politicians have referred to Income Tax as temporary and to surcharge on imports as temporary. What do the Government mean by a temporary deficit for the Coal Board, and how long will it take to work it off? I have a feeling that in a few years the Board will have run through the £30 million and will come for more and the deficit will be greater in future years than it is at present.

Mr. J. T. Price: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman when he is in such good form, but when he talks about temporary deficits and the deficit at the moment which he quotes at £30 million being equal to a subsidy, may I ask whether he would say that the private sector of industry which is running a bank overdraft many times larger than the figure quoted from the Coal Board is receiving subsidies from the banks? The relationship between the two is just the same.

Mr. Mitchell: I am glad that the hon. Member made that intervention because it shows how wholly he has failed to examine the case which we are making. We are not referring to the size of the overdraft. I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that the Clause refers to the accumulated deficit on the Board's transactions and not to the borrowing powers. Any private firm borrowing from the bank has to include in its accounts the interest paid to the bank and, having done that, it does not then make a loss, otherwise it would be out of business. We say that the accumulated loss which the Board should be allowed to make should not exceed £10 million. Surely that represents a reasonable attitude.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is the hon. Member aware that recently, in the analogy of agriculture, it was said that farmers had overdrafts at the bank amounting to over £300 million?

Mr. Mitchell: I cannot understand an hon. Member who refers to an overdraft which a business may have as being connected with a loss which the business may be making. I should have thought that


any hon. Member could understand the difference between having an overdraft and making a loss. One has an overdraft in order to plough capital into a business to make profits, and when one makes more profit than the cost of servicing the overdraft that is the profit of the business. To suggest that if one ploughs capital into the business by borrowing from the bank one makes a loss is the economics of cuckoo-land.

Mr. J. T. Price: We shall have to brainwash the hon. Member.

Mr. Mitchell: Since the hon. Member refers to brainwashing me, I should like to refer, without I hope being out of order, to the opportunities given by the National Coal Board for hon. Members to visit its installations.

The Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Member will refer to it only if it has a direct bearing on the Amendment which he is moving.

Mr. Mitchell: In this instance I think that it has direct relevance because it enabled us to see some of the activities of the Board which are relevant to its making a profit or accumulating a deficit of the size which we are worried about in asking that this sum be reduced from £30 million to £10 million. In this connection it seems to me very important that the Coal Board should not be able to separate itself from the ordinary activities of business which prevent a business from ignoring the economic situation and make it concentrate on trying to make a profit. The Government ask that the deficit should be allowed to accumulate to the sum of £30 million. Therefore, in suggesting that the limit should be £10 million, it is relevant to say that the Coal Board should be compelled to be activated by economic pressures which force any business to examine its workings carefully and thoroughly.
The White Paper refers to the Remotely Operated Longwall Face machinery. It is with this advanced mechanisation that the Board can do a great deal to improve the efficiency of the industry, but it is nonsense if one has modern machinery of this sort in one pit while in the next the miners have to walk two miles to the coalface. It is also a nonsense that one should have this sort

of machinery which can do so much to reduce the Board's deficit and yet at the same time one should have a restrictive practice operating where miners are not prepared to accept this sort of mechanisation of the pits. I hope that that will be remembered.

Mr. Harold Neal: Is the hon. Member, with his limited knowledge of the mining industry, seriously suggesting that the R.O.L.F. machinery can be introduced into every pit?

The Deputy Chairman: Order. We are getting very wide of the Amendment now if we are going to discuss the appropriate machinery to be employed in certain pits.

Mr. Mitchell: I apologise if I have gone beyond the limits of order in this connection.
I come back directly to the Amendment which proposes that the Board's accumulated deficits should not exceed £10 million, instead of the Minister's proposal that the Board should be allowed to accumulate deficits up to £30 million. There are two final and compelling reasons why the Board should not have this money for this purpose. There are many more important uses for the nation's capital than financing additional subsidies and accumulations of loss to the National Coal Board. I should be out of order if I were to list these other purposes, the road programme, hospital building and the rest, but a clear decision on priorities must be taken between them and giving accumulated deficits to the Coal Board.
This is where we ought to draw a clear line and say that £10 million is acceptable on the sort of turnover which the Coal Board has, fluctuating between one year and another, but that £30 million for accumulated losses on a temporary basis is so large that it amounts to a further subsidy. The Minister has already said that he is taking care of this with the capital write-off provisions for the industry elsewhere in the Bill. If he is taking care of it in the capital write-offs, why does he need an additional £30 million for accumulated working losses? I am very disturbed about this proposal as it stands, and I hope that we shall have an answer.
It is utterly wrong to expect the taxpayer to scrimp and scrape, with the value of the £ falling in one year to 19s. and so many people already suffering hardship, and at the same time ask the House to vote to increase the accumulated deficits of the Coal Board from £10 million to £30 million. The Government ought to accept the Amendment or, at least, give us a far sounder explanation than we have yet heard.

Mr. Abse: The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Mitchell), albeit unwittingly, has put his finger on an important feature of the Bill. No doubt, with his orthodox economics, he will be shocked, o hear me say that, far from accepting that the proposed level of accumulated deficit should not exceed £30 million, I regret that it is not very much more.
The hon. Gentleman rightly said that there is a question of priorities here. In considering what should be the power to run an accumulated deficit of this kind, one has to ask how capital should be deployed and for what purposes. The hon. Gentleman suggests that the Government have not got the confidence which they affect to have in their own scheme, in writing off capital and making provision for £30 million accumulated deficit. He may well be right. I should not have any confidence myself because I have not a great deal of confidence in the deployment of the whole strategy. My main reason for saying that is that I fear that the contribution which may be made by the taxpayer will fail. In this exercise, giving a right to accumulate deficit and thereby, indirectly, to use capital from the taxpayer and in the other Clauses providing for writing-off, we must ensure that what we do will work, so that, ultimately, the industry justifies itself and justifies all the benefits which are being paid back by the taxpayer.
I do not say "given" by the taxpayer. On this side of the Committee, we never forget that during the first decade of nationalisation the Government treated the Coal Board as a public service. The hon. Gentleman should remember what was done in the past when he talks about subsidies. During that period, the price of coal was kept well below the market value and the Board was, in effect, pre-

vented from accumulating hundreds of millions of £s. In addition, it was implored all the time to produce every possible ton of coal, virtually regardless of the cost, and, what is more, it was forced to make a loss of over £70 million on imported coal. It is no good the hon. Gentleman using terms like "subsidy" to us on this side of the Committee because we know that the coal industry subsidised the nation.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. Mitchell: Does not that reinforce my argument about the utter contradiction between saying in the White Paper exactly what the hon. Gentleman is now saying, that there were not in the past price increases when there should have been, and at the same time committing the same sin by refusing to allow the Coal Board to follow economic policies at present?

Mr. Abse: It is because there was this past subsidy to the nation by the Coal Board that I do not have accountant's qualms when it is proposed to allow the Board to accumulate a deficit. The nation owes a great deal to the coal industry. One reason why I say that the amount may not be enough, not that it is too much, is that at this moment the Coal Board is faced with a legitimate wage claim. I want to bring this into issue because, if we give the Board too little power to accumulate a deficit, keeping the level to £10 million instead of £30 million—I have already said that I think that it should be more —we may not allow the Board to meet any wage claim which is coming up. I emphasise those words—any wage claim which is coming up. Unless we are prepared to meet the legitimate demands of the miners, the whole operation will fail.

The Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman is now going rather wide of the Amendment.

Mr. Abse: I appreciate that, Mr. Bowen, but I think it essential, in discussing the level of accumulated deficit, to consider the priorities, as the hon. Gentleman rightly suggested we should. I am saying that the greatest priority, in the interests of the nation at the moment, is the pay and conditions of


miners, and if this leads to an accumulated deficit, we must face it.

The Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to give that as an illustration of the need for accumulated deficits, but he is not entitled to develop it further.

Mr. Abse: I shall not deploy it further, Mr. Bowen, in arguing exactly what should be done, or how much the figure should be, but, with respect, I want to illustrate the type of pressure which the Coal Board may have to overcome if this provision and the provisions of the whole Clause are to succeed. Hitherto, in the whole history of coal mining, men have been coerced by economic pressures to go down the mines. This pressure is now ended. Other Clauses of the Bill show that my right hon. and hon. Friends are not double-crossing the miners but intend to take every step possible to ensure no miners will be coerced again to work in the pits, being given every facility for redeployment of their labour, through redundancy schemes, the industrial development certificate scheme, and so on. There will be no more economic coercion. But, in these circumstances, we have to consider whether, after the taxpayer has done all that the Bill proposes, the industry could fail having regard to the existing rates of wages. I am saying that we must on no account——

The Deputy Chairman: Order. I have allowed the hon. Gentleman considerable latitude on this point. He must now keep more strictly to the Amendment.

Mr. Abse: I am saying that this industry cannot be regarded merely as an accounting operation. I do not myself take the view, as some of my hon. Friends may do, that we must not use the term "subsidy". If it is necessary to accumulate a loss in the industry for the benefit of the nation, why should we not do it?

Mr. Mitchell: How is an accumulated loss for the benefit of the nation? It seems the very opposite.

Mr. Abse: Because the coal is being produced and because we have a balance of payments problem which necessitates 170 million tons a year being produced. What is the whole operation for if we do not get that amount of coal?

Mr. Arthur Probert: Does my hon. Friend recall that last week £80 million was given as a subsidy to the agricultural industry?

Mr. Abse: That illustrates the point. Sometimes this nation has to choose what it needs because it must take account of balance of payments problems as well as of anything else. I hope that there will come a time when every mine will be closed. That is what every miners' leader in South Wales since I was a boy has been saying. We all look forward to it. Mining is a barbaric occupation. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary quoted Aneurin Bevan, who spoke about the need to have people in white overalls above ground at the mines and not down inside them.

The Deputy Chairman: Order. What we are concerned with is the permitted accumulated deficit.

Mr. Abse: Therefore, the nation has to choose and it may have to choose an industry working at a deficit. I believe that my right hon. Friend and the Government are too sensitive of what the accountants on the other side of the Committee will say about deficits for the coal industry. Those accountants are so concerned to see that a profit is shown and that the industry must not have a deficit that they do not take account either of national needs or of the miners' needs.
It is time that the Government shook off the attitude that it should run the nationalised industries in accordance with the rules laid down by the last Government. Even this Bill has been drafted on the basis used by the Tory Government. A lawyer is a lawyer is a lawyer and is a draftsman. But the question of principle, of how we are to run the industry, is a different matter.
I hope that my hon. Friend will not plead that there will never be a deficit of £30 million. I hope that we shall get 170 million tons without a deficit. But if it needs a deficit so that the miners can live as they should, as the aristocrats of labour, then the nation has to pay it. When the hon. Member for Basingstoke speaks of what taxpayers would say, then I ask him whether he thinks that people in Cardiff, Stockport or other places are so unconcerned with the national need?
My hon. Friends and I have some awareness of what is going on inside the industry and we think it time it was said that the nation will have to face up to the situation if it is to deal with the balance of payments problem. If we fail to deal with the balance of payments all taxpayers will suffer and the standard of living will go down. To help solve that problem we need to get the miners in to produce coal.
I hope that we shall have no more of these chirps, no more of thesecheeseparing financial experts telling us how the balance sheet should be printed. There is a wide gap between the balance sheet and reality in the coalfields. Those of us in touch with the coalfields know that it is not an accumulated deficit that we have to he concerned about but men—men who are stampeding out, largely as a result of stupid talk and irresponsible criticism when everyone should have but one concern; a healthy industry with healthy miners able to live well with a really good wage.

Mr. Cyril Bence: I resent the assumption that the coal industry can be compared with the average engineering or processing industry. When we are discussing deficits of any industry, I never hear any hon. Member opposite comparing, for instance, the agriculture industry with the motor industry. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) that I would consider the £30 million permitted deficit comparatively small in face of the responsibilities placed upon the coal industry by various Acts.
Those responsibilities are far in excess of those placed on agriculture. The extracting of coal is not a manufacturing process. It is purely extractive and all sorts of exigencies and difficulties can arise. For instance, new pits can be sunk at considerable cost and no one is to blame because of a fault that could not be foretold.

Mr. Mitchell: The hon. Member is strengthening my argument. The Government have taken care of the capital expense of certain pits which will not come to fruition by a substantial wipe-off in capital. We are not concerned with them. The Government have wiped the slate clean as far as they are concerned. But we say that, this having been done

and the points the hon. Gentleman mentions having been taken into account, the National Coal Board should be able to operate the industry without substantial loss in future.

Mr. Bence: I agree that a great deal of old capital has been written off. This has been done because the National Coal Board inherited an industry which had been sadly run down—and I do not apportion blame for that in this debate. A lot of mines were coming to the end of their usefulness. I think, as I thought at the time, that the post-war Government made a mistake in saddling everything on the industry. Much of this should have been met by the Exchequer.
The National Coal Board will always have to face conditions and circumstances from year to year that are different from those of any other industry, because coal is an extractive industry. A man who works underground acquires a skill which, if not wanted for getting coal, is not wanted anywhere else. A man trained as an engineer can practise his job anywhere in the world but——

The Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman is getting very wide of the Amendment.

Mr. Bence: I am trying to point out that the National Coal Board should be permitted to rise to a certain deficit because it has responsibilities that no other industry has. It also has a responsibility laid upon it to undertake more generous treatment to men who might be made redundant than is found in any other industry. It has to carry a higher percentage of injured men than any other industry. Would those who want to cut down the permissible deficit suggest that the Board must not employ any more injured men than the minimum of 3 per cent. that an ordinary industry is bound to employ of men wounded in the war? The coal industry has to carry a much larger percentage. It employs thousands of injured men. Do hon. Members opposite want such men dismissed in order to help keep down this figure?

7.30 p.m.

Mr. Mitchell: I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that he is arguing totally irrationally against the wording of the White Paper itself, which specifically says that the Coal Board does


not seek and the Labour Government do not favour a continuing general subsidy for coal production. That being so, how can the hon. Gentleman make a lengthy speech in which he pleads for precisely that—that the coal industry should be given preferential special treatment amounting to a general subsidy?

Mr. Bence: I am not pleading for a subsidy. Hon. Members have been comparing the coal industry with other industries, but it has to carry problems more difficult of those than any other industry. It has not only a commercial capacity but other responsibilities, given to it by previous Administrations as well as by the present Government. Do hon. Members suggest that it should abdicate its responsibilities for subsidence, for industrial diseases from which miners suffer, like silicosis? Far from being too much, this sum of £30 million is on the mean or conservative side.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: Hon. Members opposite have missed the point of the Amendment, for they have spent the last few minutes expressing to the Committee their concern about the coal industry and the fact that capital is needed to make it effective. Nobody on this side of the Committee disputes that for a moment. All we are seeking to do by the Amendment is to ask that the Minister return to the House at a point earlier than that stated in the Bill. In other words, the Bill talks about allowing a figure of £30 million and our Amendment suggests £10 million.
Hon. Members opposite have made great play about the special features of the industry and the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) went to great lengths to explain that no cheeseparing methods or subjecting the industry to accounting systems should be allowed. We believe that it is an important industry, as we said very firmly on Second Reading, and we will do our best to support it, which is why we did not vote against the Bill on Second Reading.
But this does not mean that we are in favour of Liberty Hall. We do not regard the industry as a social service. It has its part to play, like many other industries, and while some hon. Members opposite may make passionate' pleas, which are no doubt very important in

the areas which they represent, we on this side of the Committee also have the responsibility for reminding ourselves that we are responsible to the taxpayers —[An HON. MEMBER: "Surtax payers."]—and the Surtax payers.
Therefore, at a time when the industry is writing off—and let us remind ourselves of that—an accumulated deficit of £91 million, it is not surprising that at least we on this side of the Committee are anxious to make sure that this does not have to happen again. Hon. Members opposite are somewhat confused into thinking that what we are trying to do is to prevent the industry from having sufficient capital on which to build its future. There is no such intention. What we are determined to see is that the industry does not run into debt on a very grand scale and then expect the taxpayers to be milked to make that good.
We are asking the Minister to give us an assurance that when it comes to considering the industry's accumulated deficit there is no intention of allowing the figure of £30 million to be run up to automatically. We say £10 million because that means bringing the Minister back here and virtually means there not being any debt. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary would agree that we cannot responsibly allow this rickety financial structure of the industry to continue to be shored up by the taxpayer.
Hon. Members opposite have used as one of their arguments the fact that prices have been artificially low, but I remind them that only last year there were selective reductions in coke prices. On that occasion the Chairman of the National Coal Board said:
This is the first time for a quarter of a century or more that there has been a reduction in the price of coal to British industry. If we are able to push up productivity sufficiently fast, our financial position will be strengthened and we shall be able to make further selective price reductions of this kind.
Sixteen months later, hon. Gentlemen opposite used this partly as an excuse for the financial situation after the first six months of this year. Let us be realistic. We on this side of the Committee are determined to protect the taxpayer and we have moved the Amendment to make sure that the sort of situation which we are now facing does not arise again.

Mr. J. B. Symonds: I had not intended to participate in the debate so early, but hearing such an outcry from hon. Members opposite about having to protect the taxpayers I have to say that I remember that last year there was such an uproar when the Minister of Agriculture said certain things. I also remember that there was no outcry about the figure of £380 million for the farmin0g community. I heard no comment about the protection of taxpayers.
In my constituency and in others throughout the country pits are being determined as uneconomic because someone has put a red mark against them and said that they are not breaking even, so that they must be closed and the men thrown out of a job. If men make an effort and are able to reduce their losses by 50 per cent. in an uneconomic pit, is it still wise to say that they have to be thrown out of work? Is not this the explanation for the £30 million deficit? Will not this deficit enable the National Coal Board to pay that amount?

Mr. Lubbock: There was no suggestion in the White Paper that the £30 million was designed to allow uneconomic pits to remain open. I do not think that that is the Government's policy.

The Deputy Chairman: If the hon. Member for Whitehaven (Mr. Symonds) were to develop his argument about uneconomic pits he would be out of order.

Mr. Symonds: If there is a deficiency in any miring area, this £30 million will give the Minister power to meet it when it is reported to him by the Board. This is one of the powers which he must have.
In spite of all this outcry about the taxpayers being protected, let us try to protect the miners and give them a chance to prove their worth, as they have in days gone by. I am surprised that the Minister is asking for only £30 million because the amount is required nationally and he has to see that the industry is so developed that the nation and the taxpayers benefit.

Mr. J. Osborn: I have listened to the debate between my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Mitchell) and the hon. Members for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) and for Whitehaven (Mr. Symonds) about the size of the subsidy; I withdraw

the word "subsidy" at once—about the current deficit of £30 million.
I am talking about the deficit we have. We have powers for wider diversification, and if there is this wider diversification it means that the new industries competing against the private sector can accumulate this deficit. The more the coal industry diversifies, the less should be the need for the use of this deficit. Otherwise, new industries taken on by the Board will be allowed to accumulate a current deficit which will be at the expense of those whom they are replacing or competing with in the private sector. I hope that the limit will be kept down. I support this Amendment.

Mr. John Morris: My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) put his finger on the essence of the whole argument, which is that we are concerned that the financial arrangements for the industry work at the end of the day. I have every sympathy, as I said on Second Reading, with a miner and with his claim for a proper reward for one of the most arduous occupations in the land. Our duty is to put the coal industry on a sound and healthy basis so that miners, at all times, have a proper reward. We have had some interesting contributions from the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Mitchell), who moved the Amendment. He was eager to jump into the battle, but I am afraid that in so doing he lost his sense of proportion. It was very kind of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) to come to his aid and to strengthen his case, as he said he thought he had done. I do not think that he did, and I think the hon. Member was under an illusion.
In the course of this and the previous debate words such as "sinister" and "underhand" have been used. Now we have from the hon. Member for Basingstoke the words "nonsense" and "complete nonsense". I should like to explain the importance of this figure of £30 million because he said that he would be content with a figure of £10 million as it would be acceptable on the turnover of the National Coal Board. The figure of £30 million is only just over 3 per cent. of the Board's annual turnover. We consider that the figure is a reasonable one looked at in that context. To justify my argument I use the same point as the hon. Gentleman put before


the Committee. The hon. Gentleman also asked whether there was some dichotomy between the actions of the Chancellor in raising costs and the position in which the industry now found itself. It is impossible to say what has been the aggregate effect of measures of successive Governments. This is shown in the White Paper. Costs have been raising over a number of years and I am not seeking to allocate blame one way or the other. One cannot isolate this so far as cost is concerned, or the fiscal measures of various Chancellors.
In my view, it was rather sickening to hear the word "subsidy" bandied about in the course of this debate. I do not want to get outside the rules of order but we all know that the sun shone very brightly on the National Coal Board for a number of years, and in the national interest it invested in capacity. That was the reason why that investment took place. This is the prime reason that we are now reconstructing the capital of the industry. In the national interest the industry held prices in the past. Perhaps hon. Gentlemen do not agree that we should take action in the national interest, but that was the policy of Government in the past. The policy was coal at any cost, and there were very proper reasons for such a policy.
7.45 p.m.
One cannot isolate the coal industry from the general national policy. The picture we find today is quite contrary to the picture painted by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. J. H. Osborn) and I think that his reference to subsidy, when mixed up with deficit financing—which is quite different in that capital is borrowed and this is to be serviced, like any other kind of capital with interest paid on it—was most unwise.

Mr. Mitchell: Is the Minister's case that the investment in unproductive pits and the over-investment in years past in order to make an over large target within the capacity of the industry is not wiped clean by this Bill? Is he saying that having wiped off over £400 million of the capital ploughed into the industry, this is not sufficient and we shall have to expect further losses ploughed back in future? If that is not what he is saying, what is the relevance of capital to the accumulated deficit in future?

Mr. Morris: The hon. Gentleman made his case to the best of his ability, and we respect him for it. Perhaps he will let me make mine. I have looked at the picture in the past. The measures we seek in this Bill are meant to put the industry on a sound basis. The question arises whether the figure for deficit financing should be £10 million, £30 million or some other figure. It is our intention to set a reasonable financial objective for the Board and to see that it is achieved. In the White Paper it will be seen that the borrowing limits assume a modest surplus in the period to March, 1971. The industry is extremely vulnerable to such factors as manpower and productivity problems. May I compliment the industry on its record of productivity? It has had to continue to run very fast indeed in order to stand still because of the ever-increasing costs it has had to face in the past few years.
To a lesser extent there is the weather, which is an important factor when considering the sales of the industry. Because of these matters it is the Government's view that the figure should, so far as deficit financing is concerned, be one of £30 million. Success in achieving the objective each year cannot be assumed and, therefore, a deficit financing power is needed. If one takes some yardstick such as the annual turnover of the industry, this figure is a reasonable sum. It is only just over 3 per cent. of the Board's annual turnover. I would be interested to hear from the hon. Member what kind of percentage he has in mind for this kind of industry with all its imponderable factors.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: In view of the Parliamentary Secretary's explanation, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Mr. Dan Jones: If I am in order, I should like briefly to make two points.
First, I think that there are those of us who are disappointed with the Parliamentary Secretary's reply. I join with the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) in saying that £30 million is rather on the mean side. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes. Hon. Members look askance. I am sure about that, and in two minutes I will say why. It must be remembered that previous


Governments assessed the production of the industry at 240 million tons. That assessment went down to 200 million tons, and now it is 170 or 180 million tons. Through the years the National Coal Board has put many millions of pounds into the industry on the basis of the higher figure, and as a result of the policy of previous Governments as well as the present one it is having to accept the obligations involved in that policy. This is not strict commercial practice, and it is rather unfair.
My second point is——

Mr. Robert Cooke: On a point of order. Could you tell us, Mr. Bowen, what is the Question before the Committee, because I understood that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. McNair-Wilson) asked leave to withdraw his Amendment.

The Deputy Chairman: The hon. Member for Lewisham, West asked leave to withdraw his Amendment and then I called the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones), who is entitled to speak in relation to this matter. The Committee has not yet given the hon. Member for Lewisham, West consent to withdraw the Amendment.

Mr. Cooke: Have you, Mr. Bowen, put the Question to the Committee that the Amendment should, by leave, be withdrawn?

The Deputy Chairman: That is not necessary. The hon. Member for Burnley is perfectly in order. If an hon. Member seeks to speak after another hon. Member has asked permission to withdraw an Amendment and has not been given permission, he is entitled to do so and the Committee must have the Amendment put to it.

Sir Stephen McAdden: May I take it, Mr. Bowen, that after a Motion to withdraw the proposition has been made and has not been put several hon. Members can speak, or is it just one?

The Deputy Chairman: Any number.

Mr. Dan Jones: Thank you very much, Mr. Bowen. I will come to my second point very quickly and resume my seat. The National Coal Board will similarly

have to find £30 million, and this will be an on-cost factor in the industry.

Mr. John Morris: My hon. Friend is discussing a different matter. This does not concern the £30 million for the other matters set out in the Bill. We are now discussing purely deficit financing.

Mr. Jones: In that case, I resume my seat.

The Deputy Chairman: Amendment proposed, in——

Mr. McNair-Wilson: May I repeat, Mr. Bowen, that I wish leave to withdraw the Amendment?

Mr. Deputy Chairman: I am afraid that the hon. Member is not now in a position to withdraw the Amendment. I am not entitled now to ask whether it is the Committee's pleasure that it should be withdrawn.

Mr. Mitchell: It was my Amendment, and, having listened to the Parliamentary Secretary's explanation, and in view of the other aspects of the debate which are affected by the question of capital construction, I am happy to accept the Parliamentary Secretary's explanation and to withdraw the Amendment, if I may have the Committee's leave so to do.

The Deputy Chairman: That has cleared up the point as to who was entitled to ask for leave to withdrawn the Amendment. I am now asked by the Member whose Amendment it was for leave to withdraw it. In those circumstances, I ask whether it is the Committee's pleasure that the Amendment be withdrawn.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2.—(CAPITAL RECONSTRUCTION AND APPLICATION OF FUNDS, OF BOARD.)

Mr. Peyton: I beg to move Amendment No. 11, in page 3, line 43, to leave out "£415,000,000" and insert "£357,000,000".

The Deputy Chairman: It might be for the Committee's convenience if Amendments Nos. 10 and 12, in page 3, line 43, leave out "£415,000,000" and insert "£400,000,000" and in page 3, line 43, leave out "£415,000,000" and insert "£247,000,000" were discussed together.


I gather that it is intended that Amendment No. 11 alone be moved.

Mr. Peyton: I am obliged, Mr. Bowen. That arrangement would be most convenient.
I should like to repeat my earlier apology to the Committee that these Amendments are somewhat obscure. On the other hand, amending a money Bill of this kind is not easy and one can do it only by naming specific sums of money hoping subsequently to indicate what those sums of money represent, although I have given the Minister a rough indication of the purpose of these Amendments.
First, I refer to Amendment No. 10. The point is perfectly simple. On one page of the White Paper the Government say that they are writing off a deficit caused by the interference of successive Governments in the Coal Board's affairs which prevented the Board from having recourse to a price increase. This is something with which I think we can all agree. The Government's conclusion is that it would be proper to write off the accumulated deficit of £91 million.
On the next page of the White Paper the Government get tired of condemning sin and decide that it is more fun to commit it. The Minister smiles; I hope that he enjoys it. The clear suggestion is that the Board, which applied in July for permission to increase prices in September, was constrained by the Government not to take this action, the Government taking the view that, in view of the public interest in this industry, which I do not challenge, reference to Mr. Aubrey Jones was demanded. The evidence has piled up. It is doubtful what Mr. Aubrey Jones can do with this proposition. However, this is something which we hurl not at the head of the Minister but at the head of his rather interfering colleague the First Secretary of State, who is nearly always the source of such trouble.

Mr. Michael Foot: Is it part of the hon. Gentleman's argument that the Government should never interfere in any circumstances to keep down the price of coal?

Mr. Peyton: I am simply saying that it is highly undesirable that Governments

should interfere in nationalised industries' affairs and that they would do far better to follow the patterns which they have set out, particularly now that we have adopted, with the accord of both sides of the Committee, the principles of the White Paper on the financial obligations of nationalised industries.
Let me explain the point with which I am principally concerned about the £15 million. The Government confess that, as a result of interfering with the Board's activities, they have involved the Board in another loss of £15 million over and above that for which relief is provided in the White Paper. The gains to the Board under the White Paper are £20 million in interest and £10 million in depreciation. This is an annual saving. In addition, there is, apparently, the £15 million.
However, the footnote on the same page of the White Paper says that provision is made for £25 million. It is stated clearly that the amount which it is expected will be needed to cover the deficit for this year is £25 million. This would appear to be in direct contradiction to the text of the White Paper. This is something to which I would particularly draw the Minister's attention and on which I should like an explanation. The Minister would not embark willingly on this sort of activity. In the long run it is likely to be injurious to the interests of the customer, the taxpayer, the industry and the nation as a whole, and we do not approve of it.
I turn now to Amendment No. 11 which proposes to reduce the figure of £415 million to £357 million. As I mentioned on Second Reading, the Government have given some account of the write-off to the point of £357 million. Then, with a smoothness not permissible in others, they simply state that they think
it right, in view of the extent of currently unprofitable operations, to take a cautious view of the future earning powers of the Board's colliery assets and, the contraction in the market which is now taking place and which seems likely to continue, to allow for some further increase in the amount of unremunerative investment which should be written off.
8.0 p.m.
This sort of argument is pursued on the following page, where the point is that the Government, following that argument decided in the summer to propose


the cancellation of about £400 million of the Board's outstanding liabilities. It should be made absolutely clear. The Government, having already given a figure amounting to £357 million, simply, on a cautious view, rounded it up to £400 million. I really do think that that needs some very much more detailed explanation than we have yet had. We do need to hear from the Government some justification for this fairly massive figure of £400 million added on to what are the large figures which we have under consideration. I must ask the Minister for a very clear explanation of what is involved here.
The third Amendment concerns the figure of £110 million. This is a further reduction from the figure which we have got down to £357 million, in the previous Amendment, and by this reduction we arrive at a figure of £247 million. That £110 million relates to the second category of pits which are mentioned in paragraph 7 of the White Paper:
In 1964 over 150 of the Board's pits with a capital investment of about £140 million incurred losses before charging anything for unavoidable overheads, for nterest or depreciation on their capital … These unprofitable pits number about half of the Board's collieries including some that are due to close because there is no hope of making them economic or because their reserves are exhausted …
We would rather like to know how these pits are subdivided. I am sure that this concern is felt by hon. Members opposite who represent areas in which these pits are situated.
That paragraph went on to say that there are
others, including some under reconstruction, whose fortunes are expected to recover.
I have already paid my tribute to the brevity of the White Paper, and I do not want to take away from that tribute, but we want some amplification here, for it seems wrong to jumble up together, almost in the same sentence, pits which are uneconomic, pits whose reserves are exhausted, and pits which are at the moment under major reconstruction; because surely, it must be the case that a pit under reconstruction must not merely have a chance of recovery but should surely be one of the bright jewels in the industry's crown. We would really like a great deal more clarification as to how

these different categories sort themselves out.
I know there is a good deal of interest in this Bill and that many hon. Members are waiting to discuss a later Clause so I do not wish to prolong my remarks now, but I do hope that neither the right hon. Gentleman nor the Parliamentary Secretary will take these points lightly. I am not asking for a great speech about the coal industry. We have expressed our general views on this industry, and I wish to take nothing back from what I have said about it, but I am very much concerned about these three points.
First of all, intervention, which I cannot believe to be well judged by the Government in the Board's affairs. Then I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will explain this difference of the £15 million and the £25 million and the apparent contradiction in the White Paper itself, the fact that £15 million is mentioned in the text, whereas the footnote speaks of
Allowance for possible deficit in 1965–66: £25 million.
This I have not yet been able to work out for myself at all. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary can help us. The next point, as I said, is this gloriously casual piece of arithmetic, in which we arrive at a figure of £357 million and say, "That is rather an inconvenient figure to have; let us round it up to something else; anyhow, we take a rather cautious view of this; let us make it a bit more." So we end up with this fine figure of £400 million. I am only surprised that they did not go on with it a little further!
However, these are serious Amendments, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will answer them in detail.

Mr. John Morris: I do not wish to take a technicality but perhaps some of the accounting difficulties have arisen because of a very slight misconception in the way the Amendments have been formulated. All they would do, especially the first one, would be to leave a balance of £15 million from the cancellation of the debt under the previous paragraph of the subsection. Subsection (1,b) says:
the Board shall credit the sum of £415,000.000 to their reserve fund".
A similar remark would apply to the following two Amendments. It is the


previous part of the Clause which is the operative one so far as the actual amount of cancellation is concerned. This part of the Clause—with the Amendments with which we are now dealing—as the White Paper, in paragraph 9, indicates, are merely accounting provisions in that
The substance of the foregoing proposals will be reflected in the Board's accounts in the following manner.
This Clause with which we are now dealing contains the accountancy provisions for giving effect to that intention of the Government expressed in the White Paper.
The hon. Gentleman questioned the figure of £15 million, which was the first issue he raised. Paragraph 8 of the White Paper explains:
To provide the Board with a measure of relief for the additional debt it will consequently incur, the Government propose that the total amount of the Board's debt to be cancelled shall be £415 million …
This £15 million is an aid to the Board to meet any difficulties which may arise from what we consider to be a very right thing—to postpone price increases till, as we say in the White Paper, the need for the price increase has been publicly established. We have said:
The Board, however, judges that, after all the proposed adjustments have been made, price increases will still be required.
We think, as we say, that
in view of the importance of coal to the economy, it is desirable that the case for such increases shoud be publicly established…
The hon. Gentleman has questioned the difference between this figure of £15 million and the figure of £25 million to which he referred. As I say, after allowing for the effect on capital reconstruction the Government had to take into account the possibility of a substantial deficit in the current year, and indeed, I think interim results have shown it to be a very right, proper, prudent and cautious attitude so far as the Government are concerned. We want the Board to start 1966–7 as clear as possible, so we decided to allow the writing off of all deficits against the reserve fund of up to £25 million. The postponement of the price increase involves the Board in additional borrowing, and towards this the Government decided to provide relief to the extent of £15 million.
It is not possible to quantify exactly at this moment of time the effect on the finances of the Board of the postponement of any price increases which may take place. What we say is that whatever they may be, we will provide £15 million. That is the measure of our relief as set out in the White Paper and that will increase the figure from £400 million to £415 million.
The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) asked how the figure of £400 million was arrived at and he made basically the same point as he made on Second Reading, that the Government had rounded up the figure. On Second Reading, I faced this issue as frankly as, I hope, I always do. This is the issue. The problem confronting the Government was not to decide how much of the Board's investment was unremunerative at a date in the past, but what part of its capital was unlikely to be unremunerative in the years ahead.
In approaching the problem, the Government had in mind the heavy losses which had been incurred in many of the Board's coalfields—there is no need for me to go into them at this juncture—implying a low earning capacity for their assets in future, and the large number of pits which had failed to earn anything towards their interest charges.
Looking to the future, we had to consider whether the amount of unremunerative capital in 1964 was more likely to increase or decrease. This is not a question which could be answered by an arithmetical calculation. Many of the elements that would have to be put into the sum are not predictable with sufficient certainty or precision. I have in mind, for example, as I said earlier, the rate of improvement of productivity, the extent to which the Board can hold its labour force together—this is an important and crucial point, particularly in the profitable coalfields—and the level of demand for coal at varying prices.
All I can say is that, seeing the difficulties with which the Board is confronted and having regard to the extent of the currently unprofitable activities and to the expected further contraction in the market for coal, the Government thought it right, in the circumspect language of the White Paper, to take a


cautious view of the future earning powers of the Board's colliery assets. With the amounts required for coke ovens and the cumulative deficit, we accordingly decided on the sum of £400 million as the right amount for cancellation.
As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree, this was not a matter of arithmetic; it would be impossible to arrive at an arithmetical calculation. This was judged, and it was the judgment of the Government on this issue. We have been proved to be right in taking this cautious view by the interim results for the last six months. Having regard to those interim results, I do not think that anyone can contend that the Government have taken a wrong decision, but rather that it is a prudent one and right in the circumstances.

Mr. Peyton: The hon. Gentleman has not mentioned my third point concerning the £110 million. We should like a distinction to be drawn between the pits which are hopelessly uneconomic or have had their reserves worked out and, on the other hand, the reconstructions, to which, one would have thought, no financial measures would be appropriate. The Parliamentary Secretary has not dealt with this point.

Mr. Morris: I thought that I had done so to the best of my ability without particularising the difference between the two categories. I said that we had come to a conclusion, after looking at the whole of the industry's assets and that, bearing in mind that there were these unremunerative assets, the prudent decision was to take all these matters into consideration and that the right figure should be £400 million.
8.15 p.m.
Having regard to all these imponderables, it would not be possible to calculate this matter precisely. I conceded this on Second Reading, when I said that we had arrived at a figure of £357 million and that having regard to the circumstances of the industry, which was going through a period of reorganisation, it would be right to round it up to £400 million.
Similar remarks apply to the difference between the two categories of pits to which the hon. Member for Yeovil has referred. Some of them, as he suggests,

are in process of reconstruction. One hopes that that reconstruction will be effective and that they will return to the "black" in the fullness of time.
When looking at an industry which is extractive and which is full of geological surprises, some of them disappointing, one cannot look at the whole picture of the industry with arithmetical precision. That is what we had hoped to avoid. Looking, however, at the industry's finances as a whole, and looking especially at the last interim results of the Board, we think that this is the right figure. To try to particularise or break it down into component parts might well be an interesting exercise, but looking at the whole of the Board's finances—knowing that some pits will change their categories, some, we hope, will improve, but others, because of geological accidents and surprises, may go down into a lower category—it is not possible with all these imponderables to quantify with fine precision.

Mr. Peyton: I do not want to prolong the debate unduly or to raise its heat, but I am very disappointed with the Government's answer. The Parliamentary Secretary tells us that this is not a matter of arithmetic and I readily agree with him. Certainly there was nothing resembling arithmetic in the answer which we have just heard from him. The hon. Gentleman tells us that it is a matter of judgment. I would call it something much more rude.
The Parliamentary Secretary tells us that the Government feel that they have done the right thing. In that, the Government are not unique. Governments have a way of feeling that they have done the right thing. They would be astonishingly optimistic if they expected Oppositions to agree with them. Speaking for the present Opposition on this subject, I must tell the hon. Gentleman that we do not agree that this is the right way to explain the problem to Parliament. We are not in possession of the full facts. It may be that the Government have hit upon the right figure, but it is a very chancey progress by which they have arrived at it. This is the sort of thing which makes us want to bring these matters back to Parliament more often so that Governments will not get away with quite such loose calculations as we are here presented with.
I cannot believe that it is right to include in a paragraph of this kind words which appear to indicate an intention to write off the capital of a pit which is now under reconstruction. That must be wrong. At least, the Government have reached these figures. I do not particularly quarrel with the £110 million —I recognise that there are difficulties —but I am very disappointed with the explanation.
As to the £15 million and the £43 million, I am far worse than disappointed. This is a very sloppy method of present-

ing things to Parliament. There may be justification for what is in substance being done, but there is none at all for the way in which it has been offered to Parliament in this unsatisfactory form. Therefore, I can only say to my hon. and right hon. Friends that in the circumstances I advise them to protest in the only way open to them by going into the Lobby in support of the Amendment.

Question put, That "£415,000,000" stand part of the Clause:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 131, Noes 109.

Division No. 10.]
AYES
[8.20 p.m.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Hannan, William
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Armstrong, Ernest
Harper, Joseph
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Atkinson, Norman
Hazell, Bert
Pentland, Norman


Bacon, Miss Alice
Heffer, Eric S.
Perry, Ernest G.


Bagier, Cordon A. T.
Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret
Popplewell, Ernest


Beaney, Alan
Horner, John
Probert, Arthur


Bence, Cyril
Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)
Randall, Harry


Binns, John
Howarth, Robert L. (Bolton, E.)
Rankin, John


Bishop, E. S.
Howie, W.
Redhead, Edward


Bienkinsop, Arthur
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Rees, Merlyn


Boston, Terence
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Bowden, Rt. Hn. H. W. (Leics S.W.)
Hynd, John (Attercliffe)
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Boyden, James
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Robinson, Rt. Hn. K. (St. Pancras, N.)


Bradley, Tom
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (H'b'n&amp;st.P'cras,S.)
Rose, Paul B.


Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; Fbury)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William


Buchan, Norman (Renfrewshire, W.)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Shore, Peter (Stepney)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Jones, Rt. Hri. SirElwyn (w. Ham, S.)
Short, Rt. Hn. E.(N'c'tle-on-Tyne,C.)


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Short, Mrs. Renee (W'hampton, N. E.)


Chapman, Donald
Jones, T. w. (Merioneth)
Silkin, John (Deptford)


Coleman, Donald
Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Lawson, George
Snow, Julian


Cousins, Rt. Hn. Frank
Leadbitter, Ted
Stones, William


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)
Swain, Thomas


Crossman, Rt. Hn. R. H. S.
Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Symonds, J. B.


Dalyell, Tarn
Lomas, Kenneth
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Darling, Ceorge
Loughlin, Charles
Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)


Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
MacColl, James
Thornton, Ernest


Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Mclnnes, James
Tinn, James


Dell, Edmund
McKay, Mrs. Margaret
Urwin, T. W.


Doig, Peter
Mackenzie, Cregor (Rutherglen)
Walden, Brian (All Saints)


Dunn, James A.
McLeavy, Frank
Warbey, William


Dunnett, Jack
MacPherson, Malcolm
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
White, Mrs. Eirene


Ensor, David
Mallalieu, j. P. W. (Huddersfield,E.)
Whitlock, William


Finch, Harold (Bedwellty)
Mason, Roy
Wilkins, W. A.


Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Mellish, Robert
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Floud, Bernard
Mendelson, J. J.
Williams, Clifford (Abertiliery)


Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Garrett, W. E.
Morris, Charles (Openshaw)
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Gregory, Arnold
Morris, John (Aberavon)
Willis, George (Edinburgh, E.)


Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)
Neal, Harold
Wyatt, Woodrow


Hale, Leslie
Noel-Baker, Rt.Hn.Philip(Derby,S.)



Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Orbach, Maurice
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Hamilton, William (West Fife)
Padley, Walter
Mr. O'Malley and Mr. Ifor Davies.


Hamling, William (Woolwich, W.)
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)





NOES


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Box, Donald
Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)


Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)
Brinton, Sir Tatton
Curran, Charles


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Bromley-Davenport, Lt. -Col. Sir Walter
Dance, James


Anstruther-Gray, Rt. Hn. Sir W.
Brooke, Rt. Hn. Henry
Davies, Dr. Wyndham (Perry Barr)


Balniel, Lord
Buck, Antony
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry


Batsford, Brian
Bullus, Sir Eric
Dean, Paul


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Burden, F. A.
Digby, Simon Wingfield


Biffen, John
Campbell, Gordon
Eden, Sir John


Biggs-Davison, John
Carlisle, Mark
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)


Bingham, R. M.
Chichester-Clark, R.
Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.)


Blaker, Peter
Cooke, Robert
Eyre, Reginald




Farr, John
Lubbock, Eric
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Fraser, Rt. Bn. Hugh (St'fford &amp; Stone)
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Shepherd, William


Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)
MacArthur, Ian
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'd &amp; Chiswick)


Gammans, Lady
Mackie, George Y. (C'ness &amp; S'land)
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Gardner, Edward
McNair-Wilson, Patrick
Steel, David (Roxburgh)


Gibson-Watt, David
Maitland, Sir John
Studholme, Sir Henry


Giles, Rear-Admiral Morgan
Maude, Angus
Summers, Sir Spencer


Gtesham Cooke, R.
Mawby, Ray
Talbot, John E.


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)


Griffiths, Peter (Smethwick)
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Thomas, Sir Leslie (Canterbury)


Harris, Reader (Heston)
Mitchell, David
Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Conway)


Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon,S.)


Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Thorpe, Jeremy


Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Hawkins, Paul
Nugent, Rt. Hn. Sir Richard
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel
Osborn, John (Hallam)
Walker, Peter (Worcester)


Hopkins, Alan
Peel, John
Wall, Patrick


Hordern, Peter
Percival, Ian
Webster, David


Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Peyton, John
Whitelaw, William


Kerr, Sir Hamilton (Cambridge)
Pym, Francis
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Kershaw, Anthony
Quennell, Miss J. M.
Wise, A. R.


King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Kirk, Peter
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David
Younger, Hn. George


Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)



Langford-Holt, Sir John
Russell, Sir Ronald
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:




Mr. McLaren and Mr. More.

Mr. Peyton: I beg to move Amendment No. 13, in page 4, line 4, at the end to insert:
Provided that the Minister shall not consent to any such sums being applied for the purpose of financing any revenue deficit which may from time to time have been incurred by the Board.
The Amendment can be dealt with very briefly, but this is not to say—[An HON. MEMBER: "Good"] The hon. Gentleman should be careful. I have dealt with most of the Amendments under my hand fairly shortly, but, if provoked, I could, of course, always lend myself to that verbosity which I associate with some hen. Gentleman opposite: I would not wish to specify any names.
The purpose of the Amendment is partly to applaud the Government on the principle which is enunciated in the White Paper, that the newly established reserves shall not be used to cover any deficit after this year. In paragraph (9) of the White Paper are these words:
Thereafter"—
that is, after this year—
it is not intended to allow revenue deficits to be written off against this reserve.
We have all had experience, I think, of Governments with very good intentions who sometimes fall down on those intentions. Here is one comparatively rare case in which I can at least congratulate the Government wholeheartedly on their intentions. They are pure and they are good—in this instance. I do not wish to be quoted without those last words.
We should like to have this written into the Bill. Ministers change and Governments are immensely influenced by changing circumstances and the desire to do what is most convenient to them, nearly always for short-term considerations. Therefore, although there may be some difficulty about accepting these words, I should like to see the Bill amended in this way.
Although I have moved the Amendment with such commendable brevity, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not underrate the importance which we attach to it. Our concern is considerably enhanced by the past record in this kind of activity. I need not remind the right hon. Gentleman that £91 million is the accumulated deficit to which we have just said goodbye. We do not want any misuse of the reserve now established by the Bill.

Mr. Alison: I would add a few words in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton). This is not entirely an academic point. As the Parliamentary Secretary will be aware from page 5 of the White Paper, in the current year there is provision to write off—or at least the possibility of writing off—as an allowance for possible deficits in 1965–66, the sum of £25 million. He will also notice that the total which is to be written off this current financial year is by no means the total sum provided for of £415 million but is only £256 million.
It is, therefore, conceivable that in the next financial year, the balance of this


reserve fund still being in hand, the Minister might be tempted once again to make provision to write off a deficit of up to £25 million. If that happened, the Board and the Minister between them would have power to write off not only the £30 million, for which we have now provided, for special borrowing but a repetition of the £25 million which is to be written off against the reserve.
We seek a specific undertaking that the £25 million to be written off against the reserve this year will not be repeated in subsequent years, and that recourse will be had to the special provision for borrowing up to £30 million.

Mr. John Morris: I hope to emulate the brevity of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton). I appreciate his object, which is the same as ours, as I made clear on Second Reading. With respect, the Amendment is both unnecessary and unworkable. I need not go into the details of why it is unworkable but, as for its being unnecessary, the safeguard which exists in the Bill against the kind of situation which the hon. Member seeks to avoid is in the borrowing limits prescribed under Clause 1(3).
For example, with the borrowing in February, 1966, as we estimate, around £635 million, the net investment of £10 million per annum in ancillary activities and a deficit of £30 million on the order books, the borrowings after two years would total £685 million, at which point the Government, as a matter of normal prudence, would be bound to come to the House for an Order. If there were then a prospect of further deficits, the Minister would have to explain to the House how he proposed that the matter should be handled. This is the best safeguard of all. The manner in which the varying limits have been drafted avoids the kind of situation which the hon. Gentleman and my right hon. Friend seek to avoid.
The Government have expressed their firm intention of avoiding this kind of situation. Our intentions have been made clear in the White Paper, and I also made them clear in the Second Reading debate. Further, we believe that there are adequate means of preventing this kind of situation from occurring by the very nature of the borrowing powers limits in themselves.

Mr. Peyton: What the Minister is saying is that under no circumstances will the Minister give his consent to the use of this new reserve to cover revenue deficits after this year. Is that correct?

Mr. Frederick Lee: indicated assent.

Mr. Peyton: I am obliged to the Parliamentary Secretary and his right hon. Friend. It is nice to be able to say that after what I have just said. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3.—(GRANTS IN CONNECTION WITH PIT CLOSURES.)

Mr. S. O. Davies: On a point of order. In view of the fact that what is contained in Amendment No. 15 aroused the strongest protest from this side of the House during the Second Reading, may we be told why the Amendment has been rejected?

The Temporary Chairman (Sir Barnett Janner): I am told that it is in order. The hon. Member must be content with the decision of the Chairman of Ways and Means on this matter.

Mr. Davies: Further to that point of order. With every respect to you, Sir Barnett, I would point out that we have heard that said on many occasions. May we therefore assume that the Chairman of Ways and Means knew nothing of the strong debate that took place on this part of the Clause?

The Temporary Chairman: I am afraid that the hon. Member must not cast that kind of aspersion on the Chairman of Ways and Means. I am sure that he knew exactly what happened.

Mr. Davies: The aspersion has been cast on the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil.

The Temporary Chairman: With the greatest respect to the hon. Member, I cannot accept that contention.

Mr. Box: I beg to move Amendment No. 15, in page 4, line 20, after "section", to insert:
and subject to the condition that each colliery proposed to be closed, should, before closure, be advertised for disposal or lease, by tender, on royalty terms on an agreed basis.


I do not wish to cross swords with the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. S. O. Davies), but although I mentioned this subject in the Second Reading debate he will recall that it was not dealt with by the Minister when he wound up.
Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I intend to be brief. There is no doubt about what the Amendment seeks to do. It is not intended as a measure of denationalisation. That would obviously be impractical at the present time, when we are discussing rather large losses in the coal industry. What I suggest is that before a final decision is taken to close a colliery, especially one on the B List of the schedule of collieries that have a doubtful future, that colliery should be offered a reprieve by giving outside interests an opportunity of making it a successful venture and keeping it open. About 81 collieries are on the B List, and I suggest that even if we were able to rescue a handful it would be beneficial both to the mining industry and the mining communities concerned.
The National Coal Board already engages in this sort of enterprise by putting out to tender small mines and opencast mining in various parts of the country. It does so by granting a licence, and drawing a royalty on the coal that is produced and sold. In support of this Amendment, I draw attention to the table in page 100 of the last published Report of the National Coal Board, which records that in the year to 27th March, 1965, 7 million tons were produced from opencast sources and just under 2 million tons from the small mines.
I believe that if this reprieve were accepted, it would not only help to provide jobs for miners who might be threatened with loss of employment at present but would help to keep the mining communities together. I believe that it was the Parliamentary Secretary himself who last week remarked that one of the extra impacts of these mine closures is that many tradespeople in the area are likely to be badly affected by them.
It would also help the Board by raising its royalty revenue. Royalty revenue is a guaranteed profit, and never a loss. I also suggest, although I daresay that

this is less acceptable to hon. Members opposite, that it would provide a healthy measure of competition in certain of the Board's areas. If the idea were considered practicable, quite obviously the maximum limit of 30 men employed in a private mine would have to be raised. It would be hard to visualise a deep mine of any size being operated with such a small labour force.
This suggestion is not quite as fantastic as some hon. Members opposite might think. Since I made it as a possible alternative, I have already had one approach, from someone well experienced in coal production, asking whether there was any chance of the National Coal Board accepting such an offer. If the National Coal Board and the Minister of Power were willing to consider whether this might be a feasible proposition as offering some solution towards the prevention of closure of even, as I say, a handful of those pits on the B list, perhaps other people would put their names forward and see whether they could make a viable proposition of the mines in question.

Mr. Probert: Would the hon. Gentleman suggest that if any of the people to whom he has referred were to accept one of these pits they would undertake the same liabilities that the Board has at the present time towards those who are disabled by either injury or dust in the pit?

Mr. Box: Quite obviously, the pit would have to be offered at tender on a commercial basis and, if there were such commitments, they would have to be taken into account when the tender terms were decided.

Mr. John Morris: The hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box) puts his finger on the issue when he speaks of a maximum of 30 men being permitted to be employed in these pits. We all know that under the 1946 Nationalisation Act the National Coal Board has exclusive powers of both working and getting coal. It has a discretion to do that which the hon. Member seeks to make mandatory, but it can only exercise that discretion in respect of small mines; that is to say, where the number of men employed below ground is not likely to exceed 30, or where the getting of coal is ancillary to the working of other


minerals. The Board, as the hon. Gentleman knows, grants licences in that respect.
8.45 p.m.
One thing is apparent. From the list of collieries involved it is apparent that very few of the pits to be closed could be worked with such a small number of men. It is not the Board's policy at present to encourage fresh applications for the operation of licensed mines, but if any private operator was of the opinion that a mine to be closed could be operated economically with not more than 30 employees the Board would no doubt consider the application on its merits. For the bulk of the pits, advertisement as the hon. Gentleman wishes would serve no purpose, since those tendering could not legally work the pits.
If it were to be otherwise, if the figure of 30 were to be altered significantly or substantially, that would be, quite contrary to what the hon. Gentleman suggested, a measure of denationalisation. It could have quite substantial repercussions on the whole of the Board's finances. The greater the extent to which this were done, obviously the greater the effect of the impact on the whole of the Board's calculations; and the whole of the finances of the industry, which we are now seeking to protect and to put on to a healthy and proper basis, could be put in jeopardy if there were a substantial change of policy in this respect.
I would certainly be against any kind of measure of denationalisation of the coal industry. We have to look at it as a whole. While in the past the Board has exercised its discretion as to small pits, if there were to be a major change of policy and if a substantial change were to be carried out to the 1946 Act, that, in my view, would be quite contrary to the proper interests of both the coal industry and of the nation.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: The hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box) has suggested that this is a magic way of saving some of the villages whose lives now turn on the closure of the pits. I believe the hon. Gentleman is completely deluding the grocers and other tradesmen who live on the mining industry by suggesting that this is an alternative method of doing this. If a small mine of this kind were handed back to

private enterprise, they would want to make a profit out of it. The first thing they would do would be to cut down upon the safety regulations for the men in the pit. The result might be that there would be many accidents and the lives of the miners would be sacrificed again. If the hon. Gentleman wants to do a service to communities now affected by pit closures, he would do far better to concentrate his attention on providing them with alternative industries which would employ those who are now losing their jobs on pit closures.

Mr. Box: I was encouraged at the beginning of the Parliamentary Secretary's speech because I thought it was a reasonable approach to my suggestion. However, he seemed to say, on the one hand, that this was a not unreasonable suggestion, but then he damned it by saying that in no circumstances would more than 30 employees be allowed to work a deep pit. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that this is quite an impracticable proposition. As I said in my opening remarks, I am not suggesting this as a method of denationalisation of the industry, but I would suggest that, as some 80 mines are threatened with closure, this is a reasonable way of providing some alternative to the closures. If the hon. Gentleman or his right hon. Friend have any other suggestions to make as to how those pits may be reprieved, obviously we would be very glad to hear them.
It was deplorable of the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) to suggest that, because someone operating a mine under licence from the Board wanted to make a profitable venture of it—I see no earthly reason why he should undertake it, unless he makes it a profitable venture—he would sacrifice safety regulations. The Board could be relied upon to ensure that safety regulations were not reduced, although it has some difficulty in ensuing that its own safety regulations are carried out at present.
Obviously a suggestion of this sort could be made a practical proposition if the Minister of Power would consider increasing the number. I would have been the first to have been agreeably surprised if my Amendment had been accepted. Having now ventilated my point of view, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Hence: I beg to move Amendment No. 16, in page 5, line 15, at the end to insert:
such payments to cover completely the costs of removal and a resettlement grant of not less than £200".
I move the Amendment in the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) who unfortunately cannot be in the Chamber now although he is in the Palace. The Amendment is a modest one. When miners are displaced as a result of the closure of pits, it is not easy for the family to move to another mining village which may be 50 miles or 100 miles away. In Scotland it is a difficult disturbance to a family to move from Scottish coalfields, for instance in Dunbartonshire, or in Fife. The mining communities are small and close, and the disturbance felt in moving is much more serious than that which would be felt by those of us who have spent most of our lives in the urban conurbations.
In resettling a miner we should, therefore, consider a very high figure by way of resettlement grant. Many of the miners who will be made redundant by pit closures will be aged between 40 and 50, and it will be difficult for them to find alternative employment if the Board is unable to absorb them in other pits. In Dunbartonshire I have had the greatest difficulty in obtaining through the Ministry of Labour or the local authorities new employment for miners in this age group. They are often handicapped because of superannuation schemes, especially those established by local authorities. We should, therefore, feel very compassionate towards these people who have become unemployed through no fault of their own or of the Board.
Unfortunately, many of these people were born and reared in a part of the country where coal seams were thin or where there were faults or a great deal of rock or where it was very wet. This is where these miners happened to have been pitched and this is where they sought employment. They have spent their lives at this work and have acquired skills which cannot be used in any other industry. I am an engineer and I have always felt that when a miner is denied the use of his skills as a miner and is pushed right down the ladder from the career which he has followed he has the

right to demand from the rest of us in society the highest possible compensation. No other skilled man deprived of his livelihood, especially between 40 and 55 years of age, deserves so much compensation and consideration as the displaced miner.
My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West has the miners' cause very much at heart. I think that he was bred in the Durham Coalfield and is not a Scot, but I know that he feels very deeply on this matter and will, as I do, wish my right hon. Friend to consider this Amendment most sympathetically.

Mr. Frederick Lee: I have no doubt of the importance of the issue enshrined in the Amendment. Its effect would be that payments by the Board in respect of removal costs and resettlement grant would now be required at a specified level. We must consider what the Coal Board does in this kind of situation. At present, there is a wide range of benefits offered under the heading of transfer allowances. Whereas the Amendment refers to costs of removal and resettlement grant to an amount not less than £200, the present grants include a wide range of benefits other than these. For instance, they include fares for the man and his family, including visits by dependants. They include subsistence allowances, which are of great importance to the miner put in this position. They include excess rent allowances and lodging allowances. This kind of allowance is at present within the ambit of the work which the National Coal Board does.
To adopt the Amendment and the figure of not less than £200 for two specific objects might well drive the Coal Board to reduce the very considerable amount it now donates for the other kind of work which I have itemised, in order to comply with the figure in the Amendment. The Coal Board has an extremely good record in the way it has handled this enormously difficult problem over many years. I think that all my hon. Friends from the mining areas have always been rightly proud of the Board's record in this connection. To force the Board to adopt a minimum of £200, for what are admittedly vital matters, would mean that it might have no alternative but to cut down considerably the wider range of services which it now renders to the displaced miner.
I fully understand the purpose of the Amendment. I do not want to argue technicalities, but I have put what I hope will be seen by my hon. Friends to be an obvious point to be taken very largely into account in this question. None of them would wish the Board to minimise the other services which it gives. I am under no illusion as to what is behind a proposal of this kind. My hon. Friends want to ensure that miners who are displaced are not skimped or made to feel that they are being done down to the last halfpenny on a purely legalistic argument by the Coal Board. This is why I say to my hon. Friends that the Board's record is such a very good one in this respect.
9.0 p.m.
The Board has a vast amount of experience. Let us keep in mind that, at the end of the day, the Board's objective is to persuade as many miners as possible to accept transfer to other coalfields. If it were bent on a cheapjack operation in this respect, it would defeat its own objective. In that alone we have the guarantee that the Board, which is under no illusions about the need for getting highly-skilled miners to areas where they can be of use, is very conscious of the fact that it must offer them every possible facility. Indeed, that is the objective of this Bill and of the Government.
My hon. Friends will realise why, therefore, I cannot accept the Amendment. I ask them to appreciate, remembering the past record of the Board, the fact that this will be a joint Government-N.C.B. operation in which the views of the unions will, of course, be taken very much into account. I do not want to hide behind technicalities when I say that it would be better to leave the N.C.B. to continue its record in this respect, on the assurance that we, too, will do everything we can to ensure not only justice but generosity to the men accepting these terms. I hope my hon. Friend will agree to withdraw the Amendment.

Mr. Swain: Will my right hon. Friend deal with the case of hardship to men whose pit is closed and who are transferred to a pit which is claimed at the moment to be within reasonable travelling distance but which is 20 miles away,

entailing almost three hours travelling a day? Will he look at this sort of case and deal with it sympathetically?

Mr. Lee: I appreciate the point, but it is not for me to determine what is within reasonable daily travelling distance. I would think that, in some areas where there was first-class transport, there would be an allowance for subsidising transport in circumstances of this kind. But I can think of areas where a distance of 10 miles would be beyond reasonable daily travelling distance because of the nature of the terrain and the fact that there is no direct access. In other areas, reasonable travelling distance could well be more than 10 miles because of a direct rail link, for instance.
We have this aspect very much in mind and it will be the subject of deliberations between the N.C.B. and the men themselves. Given the line of thought I have described, I am sure that the Board will not be unreasonable over travelling distance. I cannot give a direct answer to my hon. Friend about whether "X" miles is the right distance in any particular case.

Mr. Swain: My right hon. Friend says that he cannot give us a reasonable idea on this point. In my constituency there are men who have been transferred to pits 20 miles away. They are having to change buses twice, which means that they have to ride on three buses each way. This is because of the demarcation lines drawn by the Traffic Commissioners. Will my right hon. Friend mention this to the Minister of Transport, pointing out that such a situation causes serious hardship in mining constituencies? Will my right hon. Friend assist us in getting direct transport between districts where the pits have closed and the receiving pits?

Mr. Lee: That is a good point. I want to be as helpful as I can and if I am given illustrations of that kind, I shall try to take them up with the appropriate authorities, the Ministry of Transport, or whoever it may be.

Mr. Bence: In view of the very competent and what I regarded as the explicit——

Mr. G. Elfed Davies: Perhaps what I am about to say would have been as well not said, as my hon. Friend the Member


for Dun bartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) has risen, but I want to ask him to withdraw the Amendment.
Like my hon. Friend, I have an admiration for the way in which the Board and the National Union of Mineworkers have already dealt with this problem when collieries have been closed, and I know that the Board and the union are negotiating the whole matter. The Amendment is very narrow and does not deal with other facets which are already covered by the present agreement—for instance, settling-in allowances, lodging allowances and the storage of furniture when a man cannot get rid of his old house, and so on. The agreement is being revised with a view to getting better standards and that is why I ask my hon. Friend to withdraw the Amendment.

Mr. Bence: That is what I was about to do, because my right hon. Friend has dealt with the Amendment very competently. We are very grateful to him and we have complete confidence in him, the Chairman of the Board and the N.U.M. to safeguard the interests of some of the finest people in this country.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Bence: I beg to move Amendment No. 17, in page 5, line 25, at the end to insert:
such supplementation to continue for a minimum period of six months and a maximum period of two years".
This Amendment, too, deals with miners moving from one area to another, perhaps to a pit a long way away. It may be some time before a transferred miner gets back into the earning capacity which he enjoyed in his old pit.
I say at once that I am not a miner. I have worked on the surface of a colliery, but, thank heaven, I was never compelled to go underground to earn my living. But working on the surface was sufficient for me to see in what conditions miners worked. I have been underground and I have seen a few pit accidents in my time. I remember Sengenydd very well. The Committee will understand that those who have not worked in the pits but who were reared in the coalfields may feel more concern about the miners than the miners themselves, for the miners often become hardened to their hard conditions.
When miners are uprooted from their villages and transferred, they have to adapt themselves to a new community and

sometimes to new attitudes, for mining villages are often very close communities, and in the period of adaptation there should be some supplementation for the man whose earnings drop considerably. In my industry, when a man is made redundant more often than not he can go to other engineering employment and get an even greater remuneration than before. I understand from my contacts with miners in my constituency that when miners are moved from one pit to another, perhaps only 20 miles away, it is some time before they can reach the earnings which they were enjoying at the pit they had left. Therefore I hope that when my right hon. Friend has discussions with the Coal Board he will again give consideration to the Amendment put down by my hon. Friend the Member for West Fife (Mr. William Hamilton). I feel sure that, here again, he will be content to give the same assurance on this Amendment as was so competently and generously given by my right hon. Friend on the previous one.

Mr. Swain: Having had a great deal of experience as a branch secretary of a fairly large colliery in Derbyshire, I can speak with some authority on this matter. We were a receiving pit for three years, and when a number of small collieries were closed in our area men were transferred to our pit. Coal-face men who had moved from the not so modern pits to the pit that had been fully mechanised, up to the highest standard at time, had to be trained to us the machinery there. As a consequence, a long time expired before they were in a position, because they had not been trained to use the machinery which enabled them to earn high wages.
That is one example. There is another, and that is that every pit carries a number of what we term market men. They are to cover the very slight percentage, not the high percentage as was claimed by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box), of absenteeism on the coal face. When we get 40 or 50 face men transferred from a pit to a receiving pit there are inevitably some face men transferred for whom there are not regular jobs available. Therefore the majority of the men become the market men. On one or two days of the week they are allowed to earn the higher wages, but on other days their wages are


depressed because the face room is not available for them.
I support this Amendment, and I ask my right hon. Friend to look very sympathetically at it, because it is a very serious question in the coalfields. It is going to be even more serious in the not too distant future, because this Bill is designed to accelerate the closure of the pits. As a result we shall have a larger number of men transferred from a pit which is not so modern to an ultramodern pit, which means that they will need six or perhaps nine months, comprehensive training before they can use the highly technical machinery.
One could give dozens of illustrations, but these two are very good examples of how these men will suffer through transfer. This period should be between six months and two years, not only so that the men can be absorbed gradually into the face room as it becomes available, but so that they can be adequately trained in the use of the machinery in operation at the receiving pit.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. Ernest Armstrong: I want to intervene very briefly in supporting this Amendment. We are all very well aware of the very reasonable, fair and generous way in which the Coal Board has always treated these transfers. I remember my boyhood in a mining community when numbers of miners were moved, for one reason or another, for political activity, trade union activity and so on, without any of this kind of help. When I think of this I realise how much we are trying to help those who are transferred.
It is very difficult to get a broad view of what is happening in the coal industry. I come from West Durham where if the young men who were persuaded by propaganda over the last ten or fifteen years to enter the coal industry are to continue a mining career, they have to go away. When my predecessor came to the House in 1955, there were 23 collieries working in my constituency. In the next three or four years, if the present plan is carried out, there is one doubtful left on the list. These young men have married and have settled down. They are skilled in this vital industry. If they leave the industry, the shortage of coal in ten or 15 years' time will be

catastrophic for the economy. We have to be more than fair and reasonable if we want miners to transfer.
In West Durham—and I can speak only for West Durham—the miners have lost confidence in the future of the coal industry. Therefore, all these measures are important. I support the Amendment because I feel that we have to go even further than the very reasonable distance which the Coal Board has gone in dealing with transfers. Miners have been uprooting their families and transferring to other parts of the country for generations. We do not have to preach to miners about the need for change. But they live in a very closely knit and friendly community, particularly in West Durham, where everybody knows everybody else and everybody cares about everybody else. That is the great thing. I am always grateful to the mining community and for the fact that I live in a mining village. Going to a grammar school has not separated me from my friends in mining. We care for each other and visit each other.
In wishing to uproot families and to take them to the East Midlands or some other more prosperous coalfield—I know nothing about a growing coal industry, because the industry in the area where I live has been declining all my life—we need not only to be fair but to give incentives. That was why I sympathised with the previous Amendment and why I sympathise with this Amendment. If in five years we are not again to be begging people to go into the mines, it is essential that we should make sure that those who have had their apprenticeship in the industry and have become very skilled have every incentive to remain in the industry and, indeed, every assurance of security.

Mr. G. Elfed Davies: I, too, would support the Amendment were I not in possession of knowledge and information to the effect that the Board and the union are already dealing with this problem and that suggestions have been made which go a very long way, if not all the way, to fulfilling the purpose of the Amendment. I would therefore suggest that the Amendment be withdrawn.

Mr. Frederick Lee: My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, East (Mr. G. Elfed Davies) has anticipated what I was


about to say. The purpose of the Amendment is that payment by the Board to supplement earnings of men temporarily downgraded on transfer to another pit would be eligible for grant only if they covered the minimum period of six months, whereas at present it is six weeks. Under the Amendment, the maximum period would be two years instead of the present six months. We should therefore he very careful that we do not make worse the position of men who, by existing arrangements, could perhaps obtain better remuneration if the Amendment were not carried.
As ray hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, East said, with his intimate knowledge of what is going on, the Board has already told the unions that it is prepared to improve the present arrangements for supplementing earnings. There is no question of considering representations; the Board is already in discussions on this matter.
I understand the point my hon. Friend made about transfers perhaps meaning that men who before transfer are getting higher levels of earnings at the pit face may not be accommodated easily after transfer. It is a very important issue, but it is amongst the provisions which the Board is prepared to make.
I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend, having heard that this subject is very much in the mind of the Board, and that the Board has told the union that it is prepared to improve on the present arrangements, may see his way to withdraw the Amendment.

Mr. Bence: My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) is a schoolteacher, but he is like all of us on this side of the Committee who are not miners but belong to other professions and industries in that we are always very conscious, especially when matters like this Bill come before us, of the part which the miners have played and are playing in our country, and we like to express, through Amendments and otherwise, that consciousness, and to make certain that those people upon whom this country depends—and has for a hundred years or more depended—are getting a square deal. However, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West and my other hon. Friends, too, feel, as I do, satisfied with the words

of my right hon. Friend, and I am sure we are confident that in the long period in which he will occupy his office, in co-operation with the Chairman of the Board and the N.U.M., the pledges which he has given will be fulfilled, and that the miners will get that to which they are entitled by the contribution which they have made and are making to our society. I, therefore, beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Bence: I beg to move Amendment No. 19, in page 5, line 32, at the end to insert:
(ix) payments to appropriate local authorities for the clearing of sites made derelict, directly or indirectly, by coal mining activities.
This, again, is an issue on which all of us on this side are deeply concerned. No industry has so scarred our countryside as has the mining industry. That may be seen almost wherever one goes in the valleys of Wales. I have often wondered how the eastern valley of Monmouthshire looked before the pits were sunk. It must have been a beautiful valley indeed. I do not know whether this applies equally to the area represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) and to Newport, but it must have been beautiful before the pits were sunk.

Mr. Michael Foot: It is now.

Mr. Bence: My hon. Friend says it is now. I hope that they never make the mess at Ebbw Vale which they made at Landore and Morriston.
However, our countryside in the mining areas is really disgraceful. In my view, nothing near enough has been done to clear up the mess which was made in the nineteenth century. I do not want to indulge in condemnation of anybody. The last century was an age when we went wild with industrialisation. and when considerations of amenity and beauty were cast aside by all sorts of people, and standards became deplorably low. It was then that we had put up what became slums, the back-to-back houses, with the packing and herding of people together, the miners' rows, and the piling up of the frightful slag heaps and tips spread all over the country.
Such areas as these are now areas of development in which we want to create


other and more employment, and to which we want to attract people. It must be one of the most difficult jobs in the world to attract people from an industrial conurbation, from Birmingham, from the South or the South-East, to an area which has been a mining area, where, no matter where one looks out from one's house, one sees the inevitable tip. In my own constituency we have tips still burning. I do not know how many years it will be before they are burnt out. These pit heaps burn and smoke, There is one which, not far from where I live, at Twechar, one can see burning at night, with smoke belching out from it. Thank goodness, the progressive Labour county council is getting rid of old houses but, nevertheless, the scars are still there. Perhaps my right hon. Friend could make a grant to the Coal Board to assist local authorities to remove them.
I understand that local authorities get an 85 per cent. grant for the clearing up of these nineteenth-century scars. They get it under the Local Employment Act or under another Measure passed by the previous Administration. When that was introduced, we were all grateful. It is a desirable thing to clean up the countryside, to attract new industries and to get people from other places to come and work in those industries. We can do with an increase in our population in Scotland. We would like more people to come to Scotland, which is probably one of the most beautiful parts of the United Kingdom, with plenty of open space. We need to clear up some of our old coalfields and to get rid of these dumps and plant them.
I was always impressed by Luxembourg. The Duchy of Luxembourg has had steelworks for 100 years or more, yet one cannot see any waste dumps there. They are planted over with trees. This has been done progressively for a century right from the beginning. Consequently, there is a modern steelworks but no scars on the countryside.
I have not been down to the area of Swansea for many years, but to go through Morriston and the surrounding area on the train makes one feel sick at what was done in the nineteenth century. Here is one thing that the present generation should do in those

areas of Wales, Scotland and the North-East, where our countryside has been desecrated. [Interruption.] And Lancashire, yes, and the Midlands. We have these scars all over the country. Surrey, I think, has escaped a certain measure of them. Eton and Slough and Windsor have escaped. Harrow has escaped. But the areas from which some of us come are a very sorry picture.
We give inducements to industrialists to build their factories and plants in these areas, and I support that. We give inducements for all sorts of things. We give inducements to farmers to fertilise the soil, to keep it in good heart to produce food. I see no reason why we should not give inducements to ordinary people, from managers down to artisans, labourers and office boys, to resuscitate the countryside, to add to it a bit of beauty and remove the scars of the old industrial areas, so that we may re-create conditions to make them attractive to people, apart from the other fiscal inducements that we give them in our policy for the redeployment of labour.

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Swain: I approach the Amendment from a different angle. I have been a Member of the House for six years and I have been trying to bring tears to the eyes of every Minister I have addressed during those six years, but if my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) has not succeeded in bringing tears to the eyes of my right hon. Friend the Minister tonight, I am surprised.
This is a practical Amendment and I approach it from a practical angle. In my constituency, where we have just closed three pits and where the seams are thick and shallow, we have suffered considerably over the years from mining subsidence. It will probably be 20 years before the land has settled sufficiently to build to any extent. Admittedly, the local authority gets compensation for damage caused by mining subsidence, but mining subsidence isolates a piece of ground for years and prevents anything new being built on it. The assistance that I should like to see given to local authorities in my area, which I have no doubt is representative of most areas in the mining industry, is that the old pitheads—the area covered by the actual surface workings of the pit—should


be used as sites for factory building and so serve a very useful purpose.
The land round the shaft of a pit is very often the only suitable piece of ground in the area because, by regulation, when they sank a pit they always left a shaft pillar of some considerable size to protect the actual shaft itself.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: I have a pit where a shaft collapsed. Surely we are not going to build a factory there?

Mr. Swain: I am not surprised at anything that happens in Ayrshire!
I put forward the idea as a practical suggestion and I would ask my right hon. Friend to have a word with the President of the Board of Trade so that when local authorities suffering from this malady in mining areas make their representations, some assistance should be given to them to rehabilitate their pit sites. I might add in passing that there is always a large hole in the centre of the site in which the rubbish can be tipped. My own local authority, the Chesterfield Rural District Council, has had the deuce of a job to get a site, and I have had a spate of correspondence recently from people who have had to leave their villages and move to others. The site of the Norton colliery, which has very modern buildings on it, could be used, providing some assistance could be given from the Ministry to the local authority to adapt those buildings for factory purposes.
I offer that practical suggestion to the Minister because I consider it to be a very serious problem. If he could accept the principle of the Amendment, I am convinced that it would be a godsend to the people living in the type of area which has been mentioned.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: I must say that this is a very practical Amendment. I lived for 10 years on the edge of a mining area in the Derwent Valley, where there were the pits of the Wombwell and Brampton Burlow collieries. The tips there were an eyesore, and I am sure they still are. The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) spoke of tips burning. Not only was that the case but in summer one only had to have a light wind to get a cloud of dust right over the valley. I do not agree

that they can be cleared, because they are too big. But at least they could be planted or possibly bulldozed and covered over with some kind of cement which would keep them under.
I have always been conscious of the fact that those of us who are lucky enough to live in the South do not have the disadvantages of those who live in the mining areas of Yorkshire, Durham and so on. It is one of the things which in some ways have made the mining fraternity turn against the rest of the country, such are the horrible conditions that have to surround our mining areas.
I hope that the Minister will tell the House today that he will accept the Amendment, which is certainly a very beneficial one for the whole of the North Country. If he will not accept it, I think that we ought to vote on it.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I only wish to intervene briefly, because this is something of a constituency problem for me. May I say to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) that as much as I appreciate an hon. Member representing a southern constituency talking about the problems of the North, as the son of a former miner I could not accept the view that miners have turned against the rest of the community.
There is something about life in a coal-mining area which may make us introspective, but to put it in the sense of turning against the rest of the community, I find odd.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Perhaps I did not express myself clearly. I think that the hon. Gentleman's phrase is right. They are introspective and self-contained and, for that reason, look on the rest of the community slightly as foreigners.

Mr. Rees: I will resist the temptation to take that further.
One of the most important problems of the older industrial areas is the problem of derelict land, which goes back over the past 150 or 200 years. This is a relic of the days when the motto was, "Where there's muck, there's money". This matter cannot be held to be the financial responsibility of the Coal Board. It must be the responsibility of the community as a whole.
Although I welcome the Amendment, I hope that it will not be pressed, because its wording would put on the Coal Board a direct responsibility which should be that of the community. Just over a year ago, the Civic Trust issued an invaluable document called "Derelict Land". The present Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) and Lord Robens himself spoke at the introduction of this pamphlet, which makes many valuable suggestions. I hope that the Minister of Housing has had his Department look at it.
There is a problem in the City of Leeds, in my constituency. The Yorkshire area of the Coal Board and the city are discussing the problem of an area which could be used for building if attention were given to grading and other problems. Nevertheless, I hope that the Amendment will not be pressed. This should not be for the Coal Board: it must be for the community. The responsibility does not lie with my right hon. Friend: it rests, in my view, with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. That is the correct Department for dealing with this responsibility.

Mr. William Warbey: If we do not have a very satisfactory reply from my right hon. Friend, I hope that the Amendment will be pressed. It puts the responsibility not simply on the Coal Board but on the Coal Board and the Minister of Power. The Minister of Power must act on behalf of the community interest to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees) referred.
The Amendment is somewhat narrowly drafted, but it calls attention to the problems with which local authorities will be confronted as a result of the proposed transfer of mining activities from one area to another—the transfer not only of colliery activities in the mechanical sense, but also of labour, which will mean the transfer of housing.
The phrase "directly or indirectly" might be extended—I hope it will—to include the possible problems of local authorities who, as a result of the curtailing of mining activities in their area are left not only with derelict collieries, but with derelict miners' houses. I had such a case in the Stanton Hill part of

my constituency two or three years ago. The deterioration of Coal Board houses left the local authority with an uncleared derelict site, and it took a long time for the authority to arrange satisfactory negotiations with the Coal Board for the approaches to the site, so that they could use it in order to provide housing for the local community.
I have received from the Chairman of the East Midlands Division—as other hon. Members in the area have—a circular letter calling out attention to the campaign of the Coal Board in that division to encourage men to transfer from one area to another. The circular in my case calls attention to the fact that the campaign is designed to encourage men to transfer from the Eastwood area to the Mansfield area. I am aware that the Eastwood area of the East Midlands Division of the Coal Board extends over a wider area than that of the Eastwood Urban District Council, but serious problems are likely to be created for the Eastwood Urban District Council and neighbouring local authorities as a result of this campaign.
A leaflet which is being issued to the working miners in this area was sent to me by the Chairman of the East Midlands Division. It is headed "Five to Three". It says
Your colliery is nearing the end of its life and you may be thinking about your future in the mining industry.
It goes on to say that No. 5 Area, which is the Eastwood area,
has a record second to none. It was the first Area to achieve an output (per man shift) of three tons for every man employed.
Nevertheless, because the collieries in this area are nearing the end of their lives, although they are not even listed as due for closure, the Coal Board is already seeking to persuade men to shift from the area into other parts of the Nottinghamshire coalfield where the more modern and longer-life collieries are—

The Chairman: Order. The hon. Member is getting very far from the Amendment.

Mr. Warbey: I was seeking to impress upon my right hon. Friend the fact that local authorities will be faced with very severe problems as a result of the proposals of the Coal Board and his Ministry. I do not think that either has yet


fully considered all the repercussions there will be upon the life of local communities, and all the burdens that will be placed upon local authorities. The Eastwood Urban District Council has an extraordinary good record for its size in providing houses for miners.

The Chairman: Order. We are dealing with the clearing of sites.

Mr. G. Elfed Davies: It will probably be could be interpreted as including the clearing of housing sites in coal mining areas, since they are indirectly associated with the activities of the coalmines. I am interpreting the wording of the Amendment in that sense. I am merely pointing out that some local authorities, even in what are regarded as the prosperous areas of the East Midlands, may be faced with severe difficulties and burdens. They may even find themselves in a situation in which local authorities in Durham and elsewhere find themselves, in that having built houses for miners, they now find them unoccupied, and are not able to let them to anybody, especially if no arrangements have been made by my right hon. Friend at the Board of Trade to bring new industries into these areas.
I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend will take note of the fact that even in the so-called prosperous coal-mining areas there are severe problems for the local authorities and local communities, to which he and his Ministry will have to pay some attention.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. G. Elfed Davies: It will probably be generally agreed that the scars from which most mining areas suffer have been caused by past mining practice, and the Rhondda is probably one of the worst sufferers. I would remind the Committee, however, that in 1962 we passed the Local Government Act which gave the Government powers to deal with this problem. That there are still areas where no clearance effort has been made is an indictment of the party opposite while that Act has been in operation.
That is not to suggest that the Board, in the parlous situation in which it now finds itself, should have to take on this tremendous additional burden, and I hope that the Amendment will be withdrawn or that we shall defeat it. There is need for these jobs to be done, but they ought

to be done by the community. Many of these scars result from coal mining practices long before the Board took over, and it is unfair to suggest that the National Coal Board, which is now trying to grapple with a terribly serious situation, should be asked to take up this burden.

Mr. Frederick Lee: Subsidence and scars having been mentioned, perhaps I should declare an interest. When I open my front door I see a slag heap. Upstairs, I have cracked walls due to subsidence. I therefore know what we are discussing.
The effect of this Amendment would be to put the National Coal Board to additional expenditure on the clearance of derelict sites eligible for grant by the Minister. I would point out to my hon. Friends that powers are already available under the Local Employment Acts by which local authorities in development districts can apply for grants. By Section 5 of the Local Employment Act of 1960, the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales may make grants towards the cost of clearing derelict sites in development districts when that clearance is, in the opinion of the Board of Trade, likely to lead to he provision of employment. The grant is currently fixed by administrative decision at 85 per cent. In 1964–65 the Departments concerned gave preliminary or final approval to clearance schemes covering about 1,500 acres and costing about £2 million, so a lot of work is being done.
Again, by Section 2 of that Act, the Board of Trade may clear derelict sites which it acquires for the purpose of providing new factories, and a number of such sites have already been cleared.
Most of these pit closures will occur in the development districts. On 22nd October, as my hon. Friends will remember, the Board of Trade expanded the development districts to cover further coal mining areas. As one or two hon. Members have said, the National Coal Board does not necessarily own all former colliery and ancillary sites. Indeed, some have reverted to their former owners during the years since nationalisation. It is therefore not the case that the N.C.B. is responsible for all the horrible scams we see up and down the country. For tips started since the Town and Country


Planning Act, 1947, came into operation, planning permission is required and conditions are usually attached to the permission requiring restoration and landscaping.
Despite what I have said about the provisions in the various Acts, it is also the case that in the past few years the Board has spent £660,000 on tidying up and improving the appearance of its pits. This, again, is quite an on-cost for the Board. Indeed, the Board works with the local planning authorities and there is no doubt that it will continue to operate with local authorities on this very important matter. The very important question of special Exchequer assistance for the reclamation and clearance of derelict land is now being actively considered by the Government in the present review of local government finances.
One of my hon. Friends, referring to subsidence, rightly told us that the safest part is round the pit shafts. This is very true. A great deal of new factory development has already taken place in those areas. In coal areas such as mine which are liable to subsidence about the only parts which are pretty sound for building are those round the old pit areas. Therefore, we have this problem to deal with.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees) made the practical point that this is not a problem which we can leave entirely to the Board. It would be quite wrong to imagine that this industry, with all the problems now facing it and with the exceptional amount of expenditure it must meet, should now be saddled with this expenditure, which would have to be on a very massive scale.
I have tried to show that various Ministries are concerned with this problem. They have done a good deal of work on it. I have also shown that the Board has spent a great deal of money on cleaning up pit heaps. I therefore suggest that, with the extension of the development districts which my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade announced only recently and the fact that the 1960 Act covers those development districts, there will now be far greater provision for what I thoroughly agree is the most desirable

objective of clearing areas, especially our northern areas, of the horrible eyesores which we are compelled to live with because of the old scars of industry.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence), after hearing this very comprehensive and wide debate, will recognise that this is not a burden with which we should saddle the Board. The Board is facing up to its own responsibilities very well indeed by spending the amounts of money to which I have referred. Other aspects are covered by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government. The Board of Trade is increasing the facilities by which we can hope to clear the countryside of these scars. These facts having been elicited, I hope that my hon. Friend will feel able to withdraw the Amendment.

Mr. Bence: I feel certain that, notwithstanding the remarks which have been made, my hon. Friends are aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) was probably of the opinion that it was doubtful whether we could have a debate on the clearance of sites arising on an Amendment to a Bill concerning the coal industry without in some way referring to the Coal Board. I suspect that that was my hon. Friend's purpose. If it was his purpose to have a discussion on these scars on our countryside, we should be grateful to him. If it were suggested that I should cast my vote in favour of burdening the Board with the responsibility of putting right scars caused by the ruthless and unscrupulous industrialists of the nineteenth century, I am afraid I should have to go into the other Lobby. [An HON. MEMBER: "Cowardice."] No, it is no cowardice at all. We can only have a discussion on these scars in our community by tabling an Amendment in these terms. This sort of thing is always done by backbenchers in Committee.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his reply. I note that an 85 per cent. grant is given to local authorities for this purpose under the Local Employment Act. I have not checked it but I believe that the Schedule to that Act expires in 1966 or 1967. I hope that my right hon. Friend will consult the President of the Board of Trade and that


when we come to an affirmative Order to renew the powers of the local authorities or the Board of Trade to give grants for the clearance of sites the new Order will make tie percentage not 85 but 100. If as a result of this debate that message goes home I shall be satisfied. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. Stones: I do not intend to detain the Committee for a minute longer than is necessary to make my points and consequently I will not deal with arguments adduced by hon. Members in the debate. I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of the Clause in so far as it provides for redundancy payments, contributions to superannuation funds for the benefit of men retiring before the normal age of retirement, and removal and resettlement payments for those who are moved from one area to another in response to the appeals of the National Coal Board that such transfers should take place.
It is generously accepted that if the nation's manpower is to be fully utilised for the benefit of the nation it is obvious that it will be necessary to redeploy men who are no longer needed either in the industry or in one area of production. If that is right then it is equally right that the nation should make it possible by financial aid for such displaced people to make the transfer, brought about as a result of Government policy, without financial loss or difficulty for themselves.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) referred to acquired skills in mining and spoke of the difficulty of applying those skills elsewhere. I do not suggest that any redundant miner could be set at once to work on a bench in an engineering works or in some other occupation but I would not want anyone in the country at large to think for a moment that because a miner has spent 30 to 40 years in acquiring skills in mining he is not adaptable to some other occupation. In my own area, there is a ball-bearing firm employing 2,700 people many of whom are ex-miners, and I understand from the employers that they are very good and adaptable

workers, thoroughly suitable for employment other than mining.

It being Ten o'clock, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Committee report Progress.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That the Proceedings on the Coal Industry Bill may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour, though opposed.—[Mr. Fitch.]

COAL INDUSTRY BILL

Again considered in Committee.

Question again proposed.

Mr. Stones: The primary object of the Clause is to accelerate the elimination of uneconomic colliery capacity, but in this process certain coalfields will be affected more than others. I think of Durham, Scotland and South Wales particularly, but Durham will probably be the most seriously hit. When the process of elimination has been completed in my constituency, there will be one pit continuing whereas 10 years ago, as an inspector, I visited 16 in my division.
I assure the Committee that this is causing grave apprehension, if not resentment. I recognise that the Coal Board has a duty to the nation to provide an adequate and constant supply of coal at the lowest possible price to the consumer and that to continue operating uneconomic collieries which might bring great losses year by year would be regarded by any reasonable person as futile and foolish, but I urge upon the Government and the Coal Board the need for the greatest caution when considering the closure of a mine.
Any practical miner, as well as the mining engineers employed by the Coal Board, will agree that, with all the exploratory work which can be done today, it is not always possible to predict accurately the geological factors which can affect——

The Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman is now getting away from the Clause which we are discussing.

Mr. Stones: With great respect, Sir Samuel, I thought that the primary object of the Clause was to accelerate the process of colliery closures.

The Chairman: The primary purpose of the Clause is to make grants after pits have been closed.

Mr. Stones: I bow to your Ruling, of course, Sir Samuel, but, in all sincerity, I must remind the Committee that closures will have a serious effect upon our miners. It is vital that the financial provisions here made, which we welcome shall be on a really generous scale in order to satisfy the people who live in the mining communities that their interests are being properly served.

Mr. Alison: I ask the Minister to comment on sub-paragraph (iv) of Clause 3(3), which reads:
the provision of houses for such persons as are mentioned in sub-paragraph (iv) …
In other words, those miners who are redeployed are to be provided for under this sub-paragraph. Provision of housing is what I am particularly concerned with. It is an important aspect. The right hon. Gentleman said on Second Reading that, out of a total of 85,000 men he hoped to retain in the industry, about 60,000 would be able to get to work from their own homes, leaving a balance of 25,000 who might have to be redeployed elsewhere, necessitating the provision of housing for them. In that case, we shall be involved in a housing programme by the National Coal Board of substantial proportions.
If the whole of the 25,000 men to be redeployed need rehousing, this will entail a capital undertaking of about £50 million to £60 million. Admittedly, the Bill provides for expenditure up to £30 million, but what happens in an area like my own part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, which is a very prosperous and progressive part of the industry but which is desperately short of manpower and where voluntary wastage is about 6,000 a year?
What will happen where the Board seeks to redeploy a large number of miners into this reception area, as it were, of the industry? What happens when coalface workers arrive in a reception area to find that, even although they may be "market men", their earnings drop substantially, and although they have been rehoused in accommodation provided by the Board they quickly decide to go into other industries, such as manufacturing or construction?
If redeployed coalface workers are provided with houses in the reception areas, will it be a condition of occupation that they can only remain in the houses so long as they continue employment in the coal industry, so that if they go for higher wages in manufacturing industries they must vacate their houses? I hope the right hon. Gentleman can give a clear answer. If the men are not required to vacate the houses under these conditions it will mean duplicating the housing programme.

Mr. Swain: Ever since nationalisation, when a man living in an N.C.B. house has left the industry, he has been given his notice by the Board to quit the House. We have always contended—and it is in practice—that an N.C.B. house is a tied house and, therefore, the Board has—and will continue to do so, as I see it—taken to court cases of people who have left the industry arid who occupy N.C.B. houses.

Mr. Alison: That may well be the answer to the problem. But I shall be surprised if the Minister of Housing and Local Government likes the note struck in that provision in view of his position on tied cottages in agriculture.
Is it the Minister of Power's intention that houses required for redeployed miners are vacated by them if they leave the industry? Can he give an estimate of the sort of scale of provision of houses and expenditure which may be involved? I am not trying to strike a negative note. I regard this provision as rational. It is vital to the West Riding of Yorkshire that redeployed miners should be provided with houses. It is a matter of considerable importance.

Mr. Symonds: I have heard a good deal tonight about the provisions to be made for men who are transferred to other coalfields and who are to have grants for removal expenses and so on. Clause 3 deals with grants made in connection with pit closures. What provision does it make, however, for men who are 50 and who want to work at the coalface, or for men in receipt of compensation?
Five collieries will be eliminated in my area. Some men will be transferred to other collieries, but they will not go straight back to the coalface. They will have to take their turn in the queue of men already engaged at their new


colliery. The nation needs coal and it would be wise of the Board and the Minister to reconsider the elimination of collieries which might have an economic capacity, because, apart from the saving in grants, that might keep some men working at their present collieries. What provision is it intended to make for the men who are left after the transfers have been made?
I appeal to the Minister to make adequate provision for the men who cannot find other jobs and who cannot be transferred because there is no work for them, for the injured men and the men on light compensation. I appeal to him to recognise their case as he has recognised that of the men who are to be transferred.

Mr. S. O. Davies: I am sorry that I cannot support the Clause in any way. I had hoped that an Amendment of mine would give us an opportunity to discuss what I regard as the most unacceptable part of the Bill. I strongly object to the words:
With the object of accelerating the redeployment of the manpower resources of the Board and the elimination of uneconomic colliery capacity".
I am extremely sorry that the Minister has included that phrase. On Second Reading some of us took the strongest exception to its use before the making of provision for alternative employment for those displaced from closed collieries. Last week I had something to say—and I did not say it with any pleasure—about the tragic situation now facing the coalfield where I was born. These words in this Bill compel me to condemn the Bill from the first to the last sentence, but I must now confine myself to Clause 3. I take no exception because the Chair has to keep a critical eye on things, but I have sat from the beginning of this debate, with the exception of about 20 minutes, when I had to go and look for a cup of tea. I have heard all the speeches and discussions and I have appreciated the keen sense that lids been shown on both sides of the House.
10.15 p.m.
What has made this Clause more revolting than anything is the statement made, as late as last Monday, by Lord Robens, the Chairman of the Coal Board, who is, incidentally, a very old friend

of mine. I know that he is doing his best, but last Monday he said:
Because the Government was prepared to spend money to alleviate social problems caused by closures, the current programme, which would have taken five years, would have to be completed in two to three years.
That is most relevant to Clause 3. Last week a document circulated by the Ministry of Fuel and Power told us that out of the 91 collieries now in the Welsh coalfield 45 would certainly be closed in the comparatively near future. The Chairman of the Coal Board would now close these pits in a far less time than even I in my innocence had believed. The Minister must tell his fellow Ministers that he will get trouble in some of our older coalfields when this slaughter of employment takes place, within the next year or so. I shall be sorry for my right hon. Friend, because he deserves something better than that but he must not accept without protest this slaughter of employment before alternative employment is provided. We have no alternative to colliery work in South Wales worth mentioning. I cannot vote for Clause 3 standing part of the Bill.

Mr. Mendelson: I would like briefly to refer to a point which I raised with the Minister in an interruption on Second Reading. It concerns the general employment consequences of pit closures in a number of areas and it arises under Clause 3(3,d,i). There is there mention of payments under the Redundancy Payments Act, 1965. Obviously this refers to a number of workers who will lose their employment in the coal industry, and the problem then facing the area will be the supply of new work. The time spent on making the redundancy payments and the social consequences for the area will depend very much on the time which passes before new industries are brought to the area.
As I merely interrupted the Minister during the Second Reading debate, he gave as good a reply as he could have given in the circumstances. But this point has been brought to the notice of many Members in coal mining areas. It was brought very strongly to my notice at various meetings in the coal area last weekend, and I must press it very strongly on the Minister.
I urge my right hon. Friend to do two things. First, can he give us an even


clearer reply on the timing of the arrival of new employment opportunities in the areas affected? This point is underlined and made more important because some areas where pits will be closed and in respect of which provision is made in Clause 3 have so far, happily, not had a very high unemployment rate. But, as the Minister will realise, the result is that they have received no special consideration as development areas. I make no complaint about that. They were not entitled to special consideration and there was no reason why they should receive it under the Local Employment Acts.
But, equally, my right hon. Friend will realise that a number of new industries which have been attracted to some of these areas have not been channelled into them. They have gone, quite rightly, to different areas because they attracted special allowances and other advantages. This has led to a certain distortion of economic development. If there had been no special allowances and attractions, some part of this new development would have gone, for normal economic reasons, to areas with old industries, including the coal mining industry. The result will be that, because of the closures which take place in such areas, there will be a serious time lag in the provision of new employment opportunities.
We are therefore very much concerned to receive from the Minister the assurance that it will be his policy to ensure that if pits have a certain amount of life left in them the timing of the arrival of new industries should precede or at least coincide with the closure.
Having urged my right hon. Friend to give us the most far-reaching reply on this point which he can this evening, may I press on him a second consideration? He is regarded as the spokesman of the people who work in the industry. He is regarded by those who sit behind him, in particular, as having special responsibilities to the mining areas and as the spokesman for our people in the Cabinet. He has a special duty to fight in the Cabinet for these areas. There will be competing claims. Other Ministers and Departments will have other considerations to put forward. He has to make a special case for these areas.
There is a parallel case in some of the other provisions in the Bill and in Clause 3. There is the provision, for instance, of housing and various grants connected with it. Here my right hon. Friend will work in close collaboration with the Minister of Housing and Local Government. He will work in close collaboration with other Ministers on other matters. He must regard himself as our special spokesman and must oppose all those who might argue that a considerable time lag is inevitable. He will be judged by the work which he does on this point. It will not be accepted as an excuse in the mining community that, in addition to the inevitable and very serious social consequences which will follow from mine closures, there should also be a long time lag between the closure of pits and the arrival of new employment opportunities. If it be argued that this might involve keeping a pit open beyond a certain time, or beyond the time originally contemplated, then I urge quite definitely on my hon. Friend that he must insist that the pit should continue working till the new employment opportunities have arrived. If against this as, it is argued, a second consideration that this might involve some additional expenditure at both ends, then he must stand firm and equally insist with his colleagues that the least which the community owes to the areas to be affected by this serious dislocation and these serious social consequences which will arise is provision for those social needs, even if some additional expenditure has to be incurred.
Let him not be deflected from this consideration by some of the arguments we have heard from time to time in these debates by people who have very little to do with the mining communities and mining areas. This is a clear-cut case of keeping faith with those who for many years have done their best not only for their own industry but that it might be an effective base for our exporting industries and the other industries which have been referred to in the debate.
I conclude on this, that there will be other consequences in these areas even if what I am pleading for is provided. Even if the timing of the arrival of new industry coincides with the closing of a pit there will be a number of people who inevitably will be drawn away into another area. What we do not want


to see in an area where a pit has been closed is that there should be a period in between where the younger and more energetic people are induced to leave altogether. This would lead to a new composition of the community, and thus even some new employment opportunities would create communities which would be seriously unbalanced. I therefore urge my right hon. Friend also to see to it that when new industries arrive they provide opportunity not only for one section of the community, that they are not industries which are regarded as providing work—for instance, mainly for women and youngsters—but are new industries which provide work for balanced groups of employees, so that

the normal social composition of those areas can be properly maintained.

Mr. R. J. Maxwell-Hyslop: Would the hon. Member be good enough to tell the Committee what he intends to do about it if the Minister does none of the things he has been suggesting he should do?

Mr. Mendelson: I do not very much mind discussing that. I do not mind it at all. We are pressing this policy upon the Minister. I shall listen to his reply. There are many other opportunities, provided in the House and outside, to bring home to the Minister and his colleagues their responsibilities in this matter.

Mr. Dan Jones: Like my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. S. O. Davies) I have sat throughout the whole of the debate, but it is not my intention at this late hour to keep the Committee much more than two or three minutes, though, like him, I have some serious misgivings about Clause 3 in relation to the sums of money to be used for the redeployment of miners. In the terms of the Bill it is on a fifty-fifty basis—£30 million to £30 million. I feel very strongly that that liability should really belong to the Government, and in the briefest fashion I want to say why.
I do not think anyone in this Committee can deny that previous Governments have led the National Coal Board to believe that the target figure was some 240 million tons. We know perfectly well that that figure has been progressively reduced, but what we know as well is that the coalmining industry has really spent capital on that basis and, as a consequence, is now, perhaps, substantially over-capitalised. That is not the fault of the industry. If the Government issue specific instructions that the target must be reduced, the obligation for that reduction should rest upon the Government.
10.30 p.m.
I cannot understand why certain hon. Members opposite constantly reject an idea of that kind when the mining industry is involved, yet those who care to look at the figures will find that since 1947 no less than £3,500 million has been spent on subsidising agriculture. I do not want to go on with that line, or I should be properly ruled out of order. Without saying anything against agriculture, however, I must ask why the same dispensation cannot be given to coalmining. On balance, if agriculture has served the nation well, so has coalmining.

Mr. Warbey: I do not want to repeat my speech at an earlier stage of the Clause. My right hon. Friend the Minister has referred to it and I am fortified in thinking that he will be in order in replying to me because speeches which have been made on the Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill", have touched upon points similar to those raised by me.
My right hon. Friend must take two points seriously. The first is that as

Minister of Power he has overall responsibility to the House of Commons and to the community for the promotion of dynamic economic activity throughout the country. Therefore, the policy of the National Coal Board in the redeployment of its manpower resources, which is the subject of the Clause, is a matter with which he must, I hope, be seriously concerned.
I hope that in making any grants under the Bill my right hon. Friend will draw the attention of the Board and of his colleagues in other Government Departments to the local social and economic consequences of this manpower redeployment policy. They are extremely serious and likely to be even more serious in future, not only in respect of the development areas or the scheduled areas of high unemployment but also in those areas which are regarded by the Board of Trade as being areas where the encouragement of alternative industry or the expansion of other industries is not at present part of the policy of the Board.
What the Coal Board is doing in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, the most prosperous coalfield in the country, is to concentrate the industry within that coalfield in certain areas. There is a shift of colliery activity from the west to the east. Even in advance of the closure of short-life pits on the western side of the country, as I pointed out in my earlier speech, the East Midlands Division is seeking to encourage men to transfer from the areas of the short-life but continuing pits into the areas where they wish to concentrate the coal industry for the future.
It is already beginning to give rise to very serious problems for mining communities, and, in my constituency and adjoining constituencies, these are urban communities which have been built up on one industry, and they now see that the centre of that industry is being shifted. They see that the Coal Board is even officially, in advance of the passing of the Bill, setting about a redeployment policy and encouraging men to transfer from one area to another.
I want to know whether the policy of the Minister of Power and his colleagues is that when industries are concentrated men should be encouraged to move from the places in which they have resided


with their families for generations into the new areas of concentration, so leaving the old urban industrialised districts as decaying areas, or whether it is the policy of the Government that in those areas from which the main centre of industrial activity has been transferred, the Government will seek to promote the provision of new industries in order that the men living in those areas may go on living and working in their own urban industrialised areas, instead of either having to shift 30 or 40 miles away or become suburban commuters of cities like Nottingham or Manchester or some other conurbation.

Mr. Swain: I come from an area that was so ably described by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson). I do not want to repeat my Second Reading speech of last Thursday, but in my area we have lost 6,150 men in the last five years and, depending upon the interpretation given to the word "acceleration" in the Clause, we are due to lose 6,050 men in the next five years. That makes a total loss of 12,000 miners in my constituency.
Assuming that every miner in my constituency who has lost his job has been absorbed by industry in places up to 20 and 30 miles away, inevitably it means that potentially we shall have 12,000 fewer jobs in north-east Derbyshire within five years from now. I forecast that we shall have no unemployment problems in north-east Derbyshire in 10 years' time, because we shall have no one living there to be unemployed.
There has been a lot of play made during the debate about comparisons between subsidies to agriculture and loans to the National Coal Board, but I would remind the Committee that there is a big difference between agriculture and coal-mining. One cannot produce coal and miners by artificial insemination. One only gets coal out of the ground by dint of hard work and hard thinking. It is an industry which is dependent on very strong men battling every day of their lives with nature.
As I said in my Second Reading speech, I worked for 34 years in the pit, 30 of them at the coalface. I understand the very difficult problems in that battle with nature underground. Now, apparently, the battle is being transferred

to the surface. I have lived in a mining village for 54 years, which is my age exactly, and I know how the whole social community has been gradually but inevitably brought down. Those villages have been in the past and will continue, I hope, to be in the future, very close-knit communities. But the Bill, particularly Clause 3, will drive a wedge through the centre of every such village in Great Britain.
This is one of the reasons why I attacked the Minister—viciously, perhaps, but honestly—during the Second Reading. There is insufficient provision in the Bill to cater for the needs of the communities which will have to be uprooted in the next 10 years. It is very hard for a man born and bred in a mining village, who has lived there for perhaps 40 or 50 years to be told, "Your pit will close. You will be transferred 40 miles away. A house will be provided, but you will have, at that age, to integrate into a new population".
Last week, we discussed immigration and apartheid. There has been apartheid in this country against the coalminers ever since I was born, arid a hell of a long time before that. It is not many years since the coalmines were the slums of this country—inevitably, because of the set of economic circumstances which demanded that we be the slums. We were at the bottom of the social scale, as compared with every other section of the community. As I said last week, we rose to a peak during the war and immediately after, but because of the machinations of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite we sank again.
Clause 3 of the Bill will go through the Committee tonight without a vote, but not without some representation from hon. Members representing mining constituencies, like my hon. Friends the Members for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) and Penistone. We intend to make our view heard in the House and the country about the conditions of the mining community today. I hope that my right hon. Friend takes cognisance of our representations and makes representations in turn to the President of the Board of Trade.
My county of Derbyshire is not a development area. It is an isolated pocket in the prosperous mining coalfield of the East Midlands. The people in that


pocket will suffer hardships as great as those of any other pocket of the community in Great Britain. Therefore, ask my right hon. Friend to ask the President of the Board of Trade to see whether some sympathy might not be given to such counties—mine is not alone in this —which are in pockets of isolation within expanding coalfields, so that those areas are not denuded of their population and the community life of the villages destroyed forever in the not too distant future.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: I intervene only because the hon. Members for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones) and Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Swain) drew comparisons between the mining and agricultural industries, and suggested that it was in some way unfair that the agricultural community had received a large measure of support from public funds, the implication being that this was disproportionate as between the agricultural and mining communities.
Since the question was asked, it is only fair that it should be answered. Support which is supposedly given to agriculture has, in fact, been a means of providing cheap food for people in this country, including the mining community——

Mr. Swain: What about cheap coal for the farmers?

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: No, cheap food for the people who eat the food. We can find thousands and thousands of people in the agricultural industry who work a 70-hour and 80-hour week for a total return of between £12 and £13—

10.45 p.m.

The Chairman: Order. We cannot discuss this matter on this Clause.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: No, Sir Samuel. But, with respect, if it is in order to ask questions it must be in order to answer questions.

The Chairman: Certainly it is not in order to go into detail as the hon. Member is.

Mr. Swain: Is the hon. Member aware that the miners are the only industrial workers in Great Britain who are working longer hours from day to day than they were prior to 1926?

The Chairman: We cannot continue this discussion.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: I would willingly have pursued the matter had it been in order, because the question shows a lack of knowledge, by the hon. Member who asked it, of the number of hours worked by individual farmers. This is a lamentable ignorance.
As I must not pursue this matter in detail I will content myself by saying that if the mining community had managed to produce the product which it produces for the community at the same increasing rate for the same decreasing return——

The Chairman: Order. We are now dealing with the question of grants where colleries have been closed down.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: That is certainly so, but there is not only a flight from the coal-producing areas; there is a similar flight, for economic reasons, from areas of agricultural production.

The Chairman: We are not discussing that point on this Clause. Mr. Lee.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop rose——

The Chairman: I have called the Minister.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: I will continue on a different point.

The Chairman: Order. I am afraid that the hon. Member has exhausted his right to speak.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Gag.

Mr. Frederick Lee: It was inevitable and right that there should be a wide-ranging debate on this Clause, for here we are looking at grants of up to £30 million, which are pertinent ones—that is, they are not concerned with the wider reaches of the capital construction of £400 million but with determining that those who will move should do so under the best conditions we can possibly provide.
It is therefore natural that my hon. Friends in particular should have been concerned about the provisions of the Clause. But when I hear my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. S. O. Davies) describe the contents of the Clause as revolting I would remind him that if the Clause does not become part of the Bill there will be no payment to miners who are now expected


to move. This is an essential Clause if we are going to do the things which he has asked us to do in preserving decent conditions for miners whose jobs dry up in their present collieries.

Mr. S. O. Davies: I am sorry to intrude, but where is it suggested that the miners n South Wales—about 8,000—can find alternative employment in mining?

Mr. Lee: This is going back to the Second Reading Debate. I heard my hon. Friend's speech then, and I thought it was a good one. But I cannot go over that ground again. What I am saying is that without the Clause we would not be able to assist the displaced miners in the way we wish. Neither in the mining industry nor any other has there ever been in this kind of provision provision for hardship, this provision for men who would otherwise be unemployed. It is a new departure, and I definitely believe that without the provisions in Clause 3 this scheme would have been deficient and incomplete.
A number of vitally important questions have been put to me, one being concerned with the arrival of new work if a pit closes. We must remember that this is not an operation that will take place within a few months. There will be consultation in all localities between the local N.U.M., the Coal Board and the regional authorities, and the regional authorities have the responsibility of planning the new economic structure of the areas concerned. Obviously, the regional authority will, in conjunction with the Coal Board, take very much into account the dates of the arrival of new industry before phasing out the pits now in category C. That will be the kind of combined operation that we are now planning.
The Government are not intending just to dismiss this subject, and say it is something to be dealt with by the Coal Board and the N.U.M. or the regional authorities. We are keeping in constant session a. committee of Ministers to ensure that if there is any danger of a breakdown in the arrangements we can at once alter the facilities now provided in order to bridge the gap that may emerge in any area.

Mr. Probert: I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend, but this is an important statement, and I wish that I had heard it before. Does it mean that, if a pit is to close and the alternative industry is not there, he will see that the pit is kept open?

Mr. Lee: I cannot say that. I have said that if that kind of emergency arises we will take it immediately into consideration. It would be stupid of me to say that one can guarantee that the last two or three people will be employed in new industry prior to the pit closing. The House would not believe me if I said that, and I would not deserve to be believed. Our concern is that the closing of the pit shall synchronise with the new industry coming into the area.
I was asked about some areas that are not development districts and therefore have not attracted new industry. This is a most important consideration, and one that we have very much in mind. My own constituency is just on the fringe of a development area. Any firm coming into the development district will be outside my constituency, so I am aware of that problem. But I invite the Committee to remember that the object of the National Plan itself is to ensure a full employment policy, because we are of the opinion that the greatest problem we face is shortage of manpower. Therefore, quite apart from the pit closure clement, in the Government's overall planning, there is a plan to ensure that wherever there are pockets of unemployment we can provide industry to mop up those pockets. That is the overall policy.

Mr. T. W. Urwin: When my right hon. Friend talks about the provision of new jobs to absorb labour made redundant by the pit closures, will he accept the fact from me that on the perimeter of my constituency a pit is to be closed on 16th January of next year—the very first in the Northern Region of the closures announced about a week ago—and that a similar pit within a stone's throw of this one closed in January of this year, resulting in a 16 per cent. wastage of manpower in that particular colliery. Is he in a position to say that sufficient jobs will be provided in six weeks to take up the slack of this one imminent closure?

Mr. Lee: It depends on the object of the exercise. We are now turning over from a very highly labour-intensive industry to an industry which is becoming more capital-intensive than was once the case. The number required in the industry will not be the same as formerly. No doubt, my hon. Friend can remember when there were a million men in the coalmining industry, and during the last few years the number has declined by some 200,000—a very substantial figure —but no unemployment has been created.
In other words, the problem before us is not only how to redeploy within the industry—as I pointed out on Second Reading, the vast majority will be redeployed within the industry itself—but how to get men into the new, emerging, modern industries which we require for the prosperity of our economy as a whole.
I was asked about redundancy payments. The answer is that men who cannot be offered suitable employment within the coal industry will be entitled to redundancy payments, even if they find other work immediately they finish in the mining industry.
On the question of housing, the position is that the majority of the houses are expected to be provided by local authorities. They form part of the stock of houses available in the districts, and when a miner leaves the industry the local authority normally tries to provide another house for the Coal Board in exchange for the house in which the ex-miner has been living. This is not new. This is the method which local authorities, by arrangement with the Coal Board, have been practising for many years. When a man is transferred he requires a house, and, as has been said, 25,000 men transferred means that 25,000 houses are needed. The Coal Board will be providing about 6,000 houses at a capital cost of some £18 million. However, it is the annual losses on the houses which will rank for grant, at a rate to be agreed, under the Clause.

Mr. Swain: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that 25,000 houses mean 25,000 families, which means that X number of places will be demanded in comprehensive and grammar schools for the children of those families? Has my right hon. Friend had consultations with the Minister of Education or with the

local authorities in the receiving areas about what provision is to be made within the higher strata of education for the education of boys and girls who will be transferred along with their fathers and mothers?

Mr. Lee: I cannot give a specific answer about education. I can say—I think I made this clear when I was speaking earlier—that this is not an operation to be carried out by me alone or by any one Minister. A large number of Ministers are greatly concerned in this matter. As I mentioned on Second Reading, there is the question of rehabilitation units and retraining facilities. This is obviously a job for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour. The Board of Trade, too, is greatly concerned. In addition, the Minister of Housing and Local Government is concerned with the housing aspect, and is in touch with the local authorities in the receiving areas.
I have tried to deal with the main points which have been brought to my attention during the debate on this Clause. It is quite natural that anxieties should be shown at a time like this, but I ask the Committee to bear in mind that there is an eminently constructive angle to the question which the mining industry should be told about, rather than concentrate on the negative or destructive points.
11.0 p.m.
I have been reminded by some of my hon. Friends that I have certain duties in ensuring that this operation goes according to plan. I have been reminded that, so far as the financial provisions are concerned, I must take my share of the infighting to make sure that I get as much as I can. I reply to that that I do not think that I have done too badly up to now, and I hope to continue to do as well in the future. Looking at the operation as a whole, I believe that the recognition of all the things which have been said tonight about the admiration of the nation for the mining community is enshrined in the moneys we are now providing for the industry. The National Coal Board will provide one-half, equal to the £30 million we are putting up, and we believe that this will cover the problems which have been revealed in this debate. As I said on Second Reading, if we feel that there is a short-fall, if we see that our


assessments have been wrong, we are willing to look at the matter again. On that note, I hope that we can have the Clause.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 4 and 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedules 1 and 2 agreed to.

Bill reported, without Amendment.

Motioa made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

11.2 p.m.

Mr. Probert: I apologise for detaining the House. I promise not to be long. I have sat here throughout the Committee stage. In view of the strictures on my hon. Friend the Member for Consett (Mr. Stones) in Committee, I felt that what I have to say would be more appropriately said on Third Reading than in the debate on the Question, "That Clause 3 stand part of the Bill".
Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. S. O. Davies), I believe that Clause 3 is a very important Clause. Although I shall be critical of my right hon. Friend the Minister in a few moments, I say at the outset that I welcome Clause 3. What I think my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil was complaining about in Clause 3 was the wording at the commencement of it:
With the object of accelerating the redeployment of the manpower resources of the Board and the elimination of uneconomic colliery capacity.
This is what my hon. Friend resented. This is why I am making these comments.
The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum says that the Bill
enables the Minister to make grants to the Board for accelerating the redeployment
of the manpower and resources of the Board. This is precisely what is covered by Clause 3. It is this approach which has caused so much heart burning amongst my hon. Friends representing mining constituencies and, indeed, amongst the mining communities.
I consider that it is a tragic mistake to approach the problem in this way, and it could be very costly for the nation. My

right hon. Friend spoke about the miners being aware that what should happen should be eminently constructive. Is my right hon. Friend aware that the miners, their leaders, and the National Coal Board over the last 5 to 10 years have been facing the problem and have done a miraculous job of phasing the contraction of the industry and its manpower but that at the present moment they are fed up to the teeth and cannot do much more?
My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, with whom I have very close contact and friendship, said on Second Reading, quoting Mr. Aneurin Bevan:
'What we want is a guarantee we should have work. If we can find new forms of energy, well and good, we would rather work in white overalls on top than black underneath.'"—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 25th November, 1965; Vol. 721, c. 884.]
But my hon. Friend failed to see that what Mr. Aneurin Bevan was talking about was implicit in that first sentence.
'What we want is a guarantee we should have work.
No one in the industry, arid no one who represents a mining constituency would fail to realise that miners do not by choice want to go down into the bowels of the earth. They all want white overalls, but what we are insisting upon is the right to have a job when pits are closed. It is as simple as that, and that is the burden of our complaint about the approach here to the human factors involved.
It is no good shrugging off the problem by saying that it is a challenge to my right hon. Friends the President of the Board of Trade, the Secretary of State for Wales or the Secretary of State for Scotland. The responsibility for this Bill lies fairly and squarely in the Ministry of Power, and it is up to that Ministry to face the responsibility and see that by the provision it is making it supplies the necessary jobs.
I should like to deal with the consequences of the Bill to the nation. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Power said in a Written Answer on 9th February last:
The present capacity of the industry is around 200 million tons and there is no question of the Government arbitrarily requiring a reduction in this … I hope this statement of the Government's intentions towards the coal industry will dispose of recent alarmist reports


in the Press about the prospects of employment in the industry."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 51–2.]
I have no need to tell my right hon. Friend that the present reaction in the mining industry and in mining constituencies gives no credence to what was said then.
To go a little further back, I would refer to the document, "Britain's Coal", the Report of a Study Conference organised by the National Union of Mineworkers, held on 25th and 26th March, 1960. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, taking part in those discussions, said:
It was decisively a Government responsibility not to let the coal industry run down, and possibly out. There must be certain priorities. Indigenous fuels must come first, home refined oil second and imported products third.
It is because of the reversal of this policy that we at present feel so strongly about the way in which this matter has been approached. I want to be as fair as I possibly can, because my right hon. Friend went on to say this—and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power will seize upon it:
The Government should set a target for coal production some years ahead. Even if it were decided that the target should be slightly lower each year, there would be some stability, and both the Board and the Union would find it much easier to plan their working.
As usual, the Prime Minister had prescience to see what might happen in the future.
My only comment, in the light of those two statements, is that the Bill, despite its very generous financial provision to the industry, which I have never failed to acknowledge, is a negation of what we have been told in the recent past. This is why I quoted from the very first paragraph of the Explanatory Memorandum to prove the force of what I am saying.
I shall not repeat what I said about this problem in the debate on Welsh affairs. I dealt then with the disastrous effect that these proposals can have on the balance of payments. I only hope that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be seized of this point and consider what the consequences will be for this country not in 1970 but by about 1975 as a result of the policies now being put into effect. In my view, although the Bill is based upon prospects

for the next five or six years, five years is too short a period for sound prognostications about what will happen to this country's fuel requirements. In any case, every estimate during the past ten years has been proved absolutely wrong.
Looking to the 1970s, it is extremely likely that the position as regards oil will harden considerably, and the price will certainly rise. It is estimated that oil supplies, at the present rate of consumption, will last for only about the next 35 years, and, what is more, consumption is increasing each year by about 8 or 9 per cent. [Interruption.] Hon. Members opposite may sneer. I hope that these forecasts will prove wrong. But what if they prove right? We shall have denied ourselves the indigenous fuel which we could have available.
I sincerely hope that the National Coal Board will go ahead with production, despite what it is encouraged to do by the proposals in the Bill. We require this indigenous fuel. It seems to me that many people in the Ministry itself are not concerned about the problem. To talk of a figure of about 170 million tons by 1970 is to make a dangerous assumption, particularly as it will put the nation so gravely at risk in our balance of payments.
I come now to the minor, but, none the less, important question of the effect of these proposals and prognostications upon the port and railway authorities. How, in heaven's name, can we expect those authorities to undertake sufficient capital investment to meet what we believe to be the requirements of our export trade in 1970 and 1971 if, on the other hand, we encourage them to believe that there will be a contraction of the industry? Improved rail and port facilities are vital for the success of the nation's exports, particularly coal, and it is emphasised in the National Plan that the port and railway authorities should have sufficient foresight to provide the necessary capital investment. But they are not encouraged to do it by the provisions of the Bill.
I make this final plea to the Minister. On Clause 3, I raised with him the question of retaining a pit, if it were doomed to be closed, while alternative work was being provided. I do not expect my right hon. Friend to give a specific assurance. I do not expect him to promise that old measures in the pit


will be kept open. But this is his responsibility, not necessarily that of the Secretary of State for Wales or the President of the Board of Trade. It is the responsibility of the Ministry of Power to see that, before closures take place, adequate and suitable alternative employment is provided for the men displaced.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (WEST MIDLANDS ORDER)

11.15 p.m.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Richard Crossman): I beg to move,
That the West Midlands Order 1965, dated 3rd November 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 9th November, be approved.

Mr. Robert Edwards: On a point of order. Before my right hon. Friend begins his speech, would you, Mr. Speaker give a Ruling as to whether or not this subject is sub judice? Today, in another place, the Special Orders Committee received a petition from the local authorities involved in this Order. Standing Order No. 216 of another place states th3t no discussion can take place until the recommendation of the Special Orders Committee has been submitted to another place. Does not this mean that this debate should be postponed as the subject is now sub judice?

Mr. Speaker: I am advised that the sub judice rule of another place does not apply to legislation of this House.

Mr. Crossman: I know that a great many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen wish to express their views on what is a contentious matter, so I think I should confine myself at the beginning to the briefest résume of the facts as they are known, if not too well-known, to all of us who have been watching this dispute going on for six years or so. This will give plenty of time for those who want to express their disagreement. Having listened to the debate I will, by leave of the Horse, be able to reply. It would be easier then to meet the points raised.
I will briefly summarise what I think to be the essential facts; as objectively as I can. This Order results from the proposals of the Local Government Commission for the West Midlands Special Review Area. I think that I am right in saying that this is the first time we have discussed in this House the full products of a special review area report.
The purpose of this Order is to establish a pattern of five county boroughs in the area north-west of Birmingham. The Order creates this pattern of county boroughs by extending four existing county boroughs—Dudley, Walsall, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton—to take in the surrounding and intermingling boroughs and urban districts now in Staffordshire. It also creates the new County Borough of Warley. By this means, the present mixed system of counties, county boroughs, boroughs, and urban districts —19 authorities in all—will be replaced by five all-purpose authorities.
The Order creates a big new urban district of Aldridge-Brownhills in Staffordshire, and enlarges the borough of Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, by merging it with the small urban district of Amblecote, now in Staffordshire. These also are agreed amalgamations.
A number of boundary changes are introduced, not only between authorities within the conurbation but also on the external fringes with the counties. The major principle laid down by the Commission was that the green belt should be left to the administration of the county planning authorities. Subject to that, it recommended various changes which have been incorporated in the Order.
Finally, the Order establishes two new drainage authorities—the Upper Tame Main Drainage Authority and the Upper Stour Main Drainage Authority—which are joint boards set up to deal with the main sewerage and sewage treatment for the two parts of the conurbation which drain respectively into the Trent and Severn River basins.
I do not think that I need to state that, as a result of the history of the Black Country, the structure of local government in the area is of undeniable complexity. There are five all-purpose county boroughs mixed in with 13 county districts, under two administrative counties. I think it will be agreed by everyone concerned that this is an urgent


problem. Planning, housing, slum clearance and redevelopment have had to be tackled—and tackled not very effectively —by a variety of authorities with different powers.
I think that there has been wide agreement that reorganisation was necessary. The disagreement has not been on the principle but on exactly how it should take place. I think that it has also been agreed that many local authorities are in any case too small, especially for a conurbation. Three of the present county boroughs have populations of less than 100,000, which is far below what we regard as the minimum for efficient all-purpose authorities, and some of the county districts are weak in resources. On the other hand, I think that it will also be agreed that the counties are prevented by their much wider responsibilities from giving to the area the single-minded attention which its problems deserve.
I do not think that it will be denied in the House that the Local Government Commission put forward a scheme of reorganisation for the Black Country in an attempt to unify it, without creating a single unitary authority, by having five strong county boroughs centred on existing county boroughs. Of course, it is true that the proposals were strongly objected to at the local inquiry, held by my predecessor in Wolverhampton between October, 1961, and February, 1962—and I would like the House to mark the date of the inquiry. After considering the proposals and the objections, the previous Government decided to accept the proposals with certain modifications, and that decision was announced in July, 1962. Again it is interesting to observe the speed with which we can achieve decisions in our revision of local government boundaries. Rather more than three years later, I found myself considering these solutions all over again.
It seemed to me that the merits of the Commission's proposed county boroughs could be summed up in five points. First, the Black Country has grouped itself to a considerable extent around the five existing county boroughs. They are generally the main shopping and social centres and the primary focus for sport, entertainment and higher education. Secondly, these five will not be so big that their councillors will become

remote from their constituents, as they would if we tried to create one single all-purpose authority in the area, or their centres of administration rendered inaccessible to the public.
The third advantage is that they will be strong enough for an all-out attack on urban and industrial obsolescence and squalor and decay, which present the most complex and difficult problems in the Black Country. Fourthly, they will have the financial resources to expand education and health and welfare services. Fifthly, each will be based on an existing all-purpose authority with experience of running all these major services.
Sixthly—and in my view the most important of all—these stronger authorities will be capable of attracting enough of the best men into their service, whether as members or as officers, through their great range of functions and the undoubted scope those will offer for imaginative local government. I ask those who criticise the creation of these authorities whether they are satisfied that the present existing structure is able to attract the quality of people who are required for modern government.
Having said that as uncontentiously as I can, I want briefly to refer to what is in the Order itself. Article 5 is the key to the whole Order. It is this article which actually changes the local authority areas. Articles 8 to 10 make the electoral arrangements. New wards for the extended county boroughs and the Borough of Stourbridge were approved by the previous Home Secretary, and I have arranged for elections to be held on the basis of those wards in March of next year—on the new register—so that there are newly elected councils representing the enlarged areas immediately after the appointed day of 1st April.
As for the two new authorities; I am sorry about this, but we have had to arrange for the County Borough of Warley and the Urban District of Aldridge—Brownhills to have their elections early in February so that the new councils can come into being and work side by side with the old in preparation for the takeover on 1st April. This will enable them to appoint their officers and make other decisions before that date.
Then we come to a whole series of Articles, 13 to 20, which make the consequentill changes in the administration of justice to bring the arrangements into line with the revised local government areas.
The next Articles deal with provisions for facilitating the transfer of functions—education, health, welfare, town and country planning and housing—and then we come to Article 44 which establishes two new main drainage authorities which will provide the trunk sewers and sewage treatment for the areas of the conurbation.
The Order contains no provision for the setting up by agreement of the new joint police force for the Black Country. The Home Secretary proposes to make the necessary Order shortly, so that it also takes effect on 1st April. The transfer of staff under Article 82 protects the terms and conditions of service of those who are transferred to the county councils from the authorities which are dissolved.
I have tried to be short and non-contentious, and that seems to be the essence of what we are thinking on this Order. I would only add one other factual comment to the House before the serious debate, and that is to remind the House of the history of this Order. I think that it is a lesson in the way in which we are now conducting our procedures for the reconstruction of local government.
The Commission began its review at the beginning of 1959 and it published its first draft proposals in 1960. Its report was made in May, 1961 and the then Minister held local inquiries, of which the most important was the one held in Wolverhampton which lasted from October 1961 to February 1962. The previous Government announced their decision to accept the proposals in July, 1962 and issued a Decision Memorandum in November, 1962, announcing the making of an Order to implement the changes on 1st April, 1964. This decision was announced three years ago. Early in 1963 notice was given by five county district councils that they were bringing an action against the Ministry in the High Court. This action took some time to come to trial. Judgment was given in the High Court at the end of May, 1965. in favour of the Ministry. It was upheld

by the Court of Appeal in July of this year and leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused.
The answer to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Bilston (Mr. Robert Edwards), is that the Special Orders Committee of another place heard the petitioners today and decided not to refer the Order to a Select Committee for further inquiry. This makes six years and I would have hoped that we could come to a decision tonight, because, whatever are the rights and wrongs, I cannot believe that it is good for local government to be kept in suspense for six years. Local government has waited six years without being able to recruit adequate officers. If we do not want to bring democracy into contempt the prolongation of endless disputes is something which we should seek to avoid.

11.28 p.m.

Mr. Peter Griffiths: I rise to express what I believe are the views of a great many people within the conurbation, when I say that I view the proposals with very little enthusiasm. Most of us who were concerned with local government in the area agree that some kind of reorganisation was necessary, though perhaps, I would not accept the comment of the right hon. Gentleman that we had not been very effective in tackling our social problems. I think that was an unfortunate phrase to use.
The position is that, while some six years ago, there was a certain feeling of enthusiasm for the new structure and for new ideas, in the period that has elapsed the positive support has tended to dwindle. The active opposition has tended to grow but the main feeling is one of resignation. Certainly I would agree with the final comments of the right hon. Gentleman that whatever we do tonight, we must make a decision. We cannot hang on any longer, because it has been to the disadvantage of all the local authorities within the area. I feel that many of the authorities and many members of the local authorities within the area, are suspicious of this programme, particularly because they are not convinced that larger units will necessarily be more economic or more efficient. We are prepared to give this plan a fair trial. and those who have been in the working party for the new county


boroughs of Warley have given up the opposition they had to the proposals and are now working to see that this county borough is made a success.
The principle, certainly, is no longer opposed, but I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that it is smaller matters, matters of detail, which can cause heart-burning. I gave him notice that I wished to raise one matter which my own County Borough of Smethwick has raised on a number of occasions. Now I am raising it on behalf of the working party which represents not only Smethwick but Rowley Regis and Oldbury, which together form the new County Borough of Warley.
They are extremely concerned about one aspect of the proposals which they find almost completely unacceptable. It is the proposal to transfer one of the two major pre-war housing estates in Smethwick to the County Borough of West Bromwich. This estate consists of 230 houses which were built in 1928 at a cost then of some £426 a house, a total of only some £98,000, but that estate today is estimated to have a value of something like £500,000. It is one of the only two estates of houses within the County Borough of Smethwick, because all modern building has had to be multistorey. The revenue from this estate is some £7,000 per annum. It is proposed that these houses should be handed to West Bromwich. It would mean a great loss in housing, a great loss in revenue, but also it would seem to me to be entirely unfair that West Bromwich should only be asked to meet an outstanding debt of some £42,000 while receiving from the County Borough of Smethwick and the new County Borough of Warley an asset valued at £500,000. I would suggest that this is certainly inequitable.
However, it is not just the fact that West Bromwich would be receiving as asset of that value with a debt which would be paid off by six years revenue from the rents. It is a great loss of the social capital of the new county borough about which I am appealing. We have to build nowadays, as I have said, in multistorey blocks. The number of houses within the County Borough of Smethwick and within the new County Borough of Warley will be strictly limited. It is a town with a dreadful housing pro-

blem. The housing demand within the County Borough of Warley will be severe. Certainly, houses will be at a premium. In the county borough, in the situation in which we find ourselves, the speed at which housing programmes can be increased is limited by the speed at which we can rehouse people. It is not a matter of the pace of the building industry, but of existing houses, and if we lose 230 houses, that will slow down our redevelopment programme.
It is suggested in defence of the scheme which will take away this estate that it lies beyond the newly established boundary. The newly established boundary is a railway line. The more natural boundary lies a few hundred yards away, the main Birmingham to West Bromwich road. Already this boundary has been breached as the schools lie on the other side. It seems a strange thing to say, "All right, the schools can be in the one county borough, but the houses from which the children come to go to school must be across the boundary." It does not make sense at all.
Local opinion in the area is strongly in favour of its remaining in the County Borough of Warley. Local councillors who have sounded opinion are unanimous on this. The working party, which represents the three authorities and all political parties, is also strongly in favour of retaining this area within the new county borough, and I would ask that the right hon. Gentleman should give an assurance, even at this late stage, that this small, minor boundary change can be made, because of the great economic and social advantages which it would bring to one of the county boroughs within the conurbation.

11.35 p.m.

Mr. Julian Snow (Lichfield and Tam-worth): I sincerely hope that this Order will not go through tonight. I shall attempt to portray the attitude and sentiment of the Staffordshire County Council enlarged, if I may use the phrase, by my own observations as to the broader issues. What I feel so distressed about is that if the Order goes through, an honourable and historic county will be little more than a rump, its revenue and population will have been seriously reduced and a county which has done extremely good work over many decades


will find itself in a position of being virtually powerless to control its own destinies.
My right hon. Friend the Minister has made great play of the long-drawn-out procedures which have preceded the tabling of the Order. It seems to me that my right hon. Friend has been completely consistent in all his Parliamentary career in the establishment of county boroughs. I have been reading some of his speeches over the years. I was reading with great interest tonight—this is not a criticism of my right hon. Friend; he has been wholly consistent—his speech in the debate some years ago upon the Luton Corporation Bill. On that occasion, he made an impassioned plea for the establishment of a county borough.
By his reasoning then, as now, my right hon. Friend is lending himself to a polarisation of town and country. There are many better informed people who feel that this polarisation is undesirable. It stems from the 1958 Act, since the passing of which there have been considerable changes, both in regard to general attitudes towards local government and substantial changes in population.
I understand that my right hon. Friend has suggested to the County Councils Association that it should set up a committee to examine the future structure of local government. At this point, I remind some of my hon. Friends who come from other parts of the country, such as South-East Lancashire and Tyneside, that we of the West Midlands are the guinea pigs in this exercise. It is we who will suffer as a county council, and they in those other areas are the next people for the political high jump.
I do not for one moment apologise for reminding the House that what is at present a Labour-controlled county council will, if the Order is passed, become a strong Conservative-controlled county council. It does not in the least surprise me, therefore, that one hears polite noises of approval for this Measure coming from those on the other side.
The Committee of the County Councils Association which the Minister has suggested should be established to investigate the reorganisation of local government has received some support—in fact, total support—from the County

Councils Association in a resolution recently passed by that Association concerning my right hon. Friend's suggestion. I will take the liberty of quoting two paragraphs of that resolution. First:
That the Minister's suggestion be welcomed in principle, and the setting up…of a committee to carry out the proposed analysis be supported.
Secondly:
That the Association reiterate their view, now reinforced by the Minister's suggestion, that there is a need for a standstill in connection with the creation of new authorities and the large-scale transfer of populations from one authority to another, either of which would prejudice the future position.
It seems to me that there are two main aspects on which one should object to the Order. First, as to the timing of the Order, the statistical data upon which it is based is data which was available to the Commission in 1960 and which, certainly in my part of Staffordshire is now substantially outdated. The Minister himself must have great anxieties about it. With his usual fluency and objectivity, he presented the case tonight for a change in order to improve the quality of local government in the Black Country. But is the Minister quite sure that he is going to continue with the Commission, with its present procedures, or is he going, to use his own words, to "do a Bevan" and hoist the Local Government Commission on a Ministerial petard? If he has these misgivings, why is he putting through this Order now?

Mr. Crossman: I think there is some misunderstanding. The Local Government Commission completed its work on this particular area many years ago. Its job is over. What we are concerned about now is the Local Government Commission's work in three areas—the North-West, the South and the South-Eastand it is only in regard to those three areas that I could hoist it on a petard, if I wanted to. It was someone long before me who took over from them. It was in 1952 that they received their commission. It is not a question of doing "a Bevan" in respect of the West Midlands.

Mr. Snow: I must correct my right hon. Friend. There is no misunderstanding. He has at his disposal the opportunity to take a Ministerial decision and, in my judgment, he has taken the wrong


one. He could not have followed the recommendations of the Commission. Furthermore, if he is dissatisfied with the Commission, surely he should take into account what is going to happen in these other areas. Why is he going through with an Order when he knows and has known for many years, judging by the speech that I mentioned just now on the Luton Corporation Bill, that one should not make substantial changes unless and until there has been complete reorganisation of local government? He said so in 1951.
As I was about to say, apart from the Minister's own apparent dissatisfaction with the Local Government Commission as it is, there are other considerations which I do not think are of a particularly minor character. My right hon. Friend the First Secretary has established the regional economic councils which are now doing that work based on the existing local government structure in Staffordshire, and the West Midlands Study Group is working on the same basis.
It seems to me, therefore, that this is a very bad moment, unless there is lack of collaboration with those other Ministries, for him to table the Order. Even the new proposals are going to whittle away the traditional powers of county boroughs. He himself mentioned just now that there is going to be an alteration in the normal powers of county boroughs in the organisation of police, which is not going to be on a conurbation basis. What about the fire service? What about the probation service?
Myright hon. Friend should listen to some of my hon. Friends who represent London constituencies talking about what is happening in London now because of the mix up of services which should be based on some more sensitive form of local government. I suggest that the Minister has taken the action that he has because he is exacerbated by the long delay, as was his predecessor. But it is a bad controlling factor for a Minister to use in making up his mind. If there is uncertainty locally, that could be removed by rejecting the Order. In 1950, one of my right hon. Friend's predecessors in this Ministry advised the House to reject county borough status Bills which had been proposed by up and coming towns. Why? Because re-

organisation of local government was being discussed at the time by the local authority associations. If it was right then, why is it wrong now?
I should like to turn to another aspect of the Order to which I object strongly —the proposals for services. My right hon. Friend mentioned that a substantial number of county districts would be dissolved. All those county districts, with one exception, object to the Order. We are dealing here with a total population of 120,000 people. Is their record so bad? I know that there is a feeling in my right hon. Friend's Ministry that there has been inefficiency in local government in the Black Country. That is not what is accepted. After the Commission had prepared its final Report, as the Minister mentioned, there was a statutory public inquiry and he sent down two most distinguished civil servants as his inspectors to investigate the objections of the county council and the district councils.
I ask the patience of the House if I read out some of the objections and some of the matters which the county council and the district councils asked the inspectors to investigate and find upon. They contended that, first,
The various areas administered by the district councils form distinct groups with strong local traditions;
second—I am quoting from his own Inspectors' Report:
The local government services in the Black Country at the present time are of a high standard. There is no evidence that the services in the districts, including the county services, are less well administered or of lower standard than in the county boroughs;
third:
There is no general feeling of confusion among the ratepayers or in the districts or sense of frustration in the district councils or their staffs from the present local government pattern;
fourth:
There is no significant difference in the quality of the local government services provided at the present time by the various county boroughs;
fifth:
The new and enlarged county boroughs will not have substantially greater resources than the present county borough of Wolverhampton.
next:
The future problems facing the county districts in the Black Country are similar to those with which they have been successfully dealing since the war;


lastly:
No claim was established"——

Mr. Crossman: What is my hon. Friend quoting from?

Mr. Snow: This is from page 19 of the Report.
Lastly,
No claim was established that any particular local government government service would be improved or made cheaper under the Commissioner's proposals in any particular area or in the Black Country as a whole.
What did my right hon. Friend's inspectors say about those contentions? They said:
We agree that on the evidence produced at this Inquiry all these contentions except "—
the last but one—
were established or might be inferred. We do not think that enough evidence as to future tasks was available for us to come to any conclusion on contention (f)"—
the last but one —

Mrs. Margaret Thatcher: Read on.

Mr. Snow: I expected that question, because I now come to the extraordinary argument put forward by those who support the Commission's proposals, and which I find quite incredible. Their main argument to rebut these contentions was —I ask the House to take particular notice of this extraordinarily arrogant attitude—that the wishes of the inhabitants were, in an overall programme of local government in a conurbation, of little or no importance in arriving at a good solution. What are we doing here as Members of the House of Commons if we do not represent the interests and desires of our constituents? The Minister might say that Members of Parliament should rise above parochial attitudes. I do not know whether he will say that, but I suspect that he might, judging by some of the arguments he adduced tonight. We, as Members of Parliament, must be sensitive to what people think. In another part of the report of the inspectors it was agreed, in the words of the Deputy-Chairman of the Commission, that
If you see definite and decided advantages one way or another you may have to override the wishes of the inhabitants, but if you are left in some doubt about the advantages then those wishes may be decisive.
That was the Deputy-Chairman of the

Commission. I submit that in view of what the inspectors said and of the observation by the Deputy-Chairman that there is no case for this Order.
I therefore repeat that there is no evidence that the record of local government in this area is very bad. Of course there are difficulties and complications which arise from the historical and industrial development of the Black Country, but I would have thought that Scheme B, which was put forward by the Staffordshire County Council after the original proposals of the Commission—since it took into account enlarged county districts, which were reduced in number—was a basis upon which one might have retained the existence of Staffordshire as a whole.
Consider the hardship to the ratepayers. We have been concerned about the increasing burden on the ratepayers all over the country. What will be the effect of this Order? I do not claim to be an authority on local taxation, but as I read the figures the first result will be that all ratepayers in the county will have to pay another 6d. on the rates. That will not be the end of it, because other increased expenditure will have to be met by the adjacent boroughs—and they love that idea! So there is a financial reason why the Order is weak and against the interests of the people.
Are the new county boroughs really enthusiastic about this Order? Let us consider the attitude of Walsall. [Interruption.] If hon. Members opposite think that Walsall is very enthusiastic, I invite them to read the evidence. Is Walsall so enthusiastic about the addition of Darlaston and Willenhall? From all that I have read of these reports I should have thought that Walsall was showing a marked disinclination to have these additions. Let us consider the case of Tettenhall.

Mr. William Wells: Surely the objection on the part of Walsall was not to the scheme as a whole but that it would have preferred another area to be added to it?

Mr. Snow: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for making my point. Of course it would. It wants the best of both worlds. It has been reading "Candide", or something.
What about the Darlaston proposal? The report says:
The outstanding feature of this proposal was its unpopularity. Staffordshire, Wednesbury, Willenhall and Darlaston condemned it outright … Walsall (without even a spark of enthusiasm, I thought) were prepared to accept it, if heavily pruned: but the pruning they wanted (the lopping off of the greater part of Darlaston) was, above all else, unacceptable to Darlaston.
So here we see Walsall in an advanced state of disillusionment about the proposals.
Let us take the case of Tettenhall. I ask hon. Members to be patient with me, because I am trying to bring to the attention of the House what my right hon. Friends' own inspectors have said. I am quoting from that part of the report which deals with the proposal that Tettenhall should be included in the county borough of Wolverhampton. It says:
All these facts, coupled with the fact that Tettenhall had nothing to gain from a change and that the proposed County Borough could well function without this addition, it might be thought that the wishes of the inhabitants should prevail and Tettenhall left as it is.
I also call in aid of my argument the fact that there have been precedents for rejecting Orders of this type. The Nottingham Order was rejected in its time. With a great sense of delicacy I will not make too much of the Northampton Order. The Burton Order was rejected or withdrawn. There are plenty of good precedents for not going ahead with this Order.
I might, perhaps, mention in passing a small point of detail. In page 80——

Mr. Crossman: Why not mention the Northampton Order? I do not think that it was even challenged in the House on the question of local government boundaries.

Mr. Snow: My right hon. Friend is taking advantage of my delicacy in the matter. I should have thought that the Northampton Order was not one that would have commended itself to everyone on this side—but perhaps my right hon. Friend and I view things differently.
I was about to mention one small point of detail which perhaps my right hon. Friend would look at. He will think it strange that I should mention it, but it so happens that I am a paid-up member

of the Society for the Protection of Birds, and in page 80 the inspector refers to the Bullfinches Order of 1955. This does not apply to Staffordshire anyhow, but I mention it because I am in favour of the proper enforcement of the law in these cases.
What I have said is intended to convey that, despite the Commission's findings, the best of the evidence from Staffordshire's point of view seems to produce a very strong case for acceptance of my right hon. Friend's own inspector's points. My right hon. Friend again looks surprised. I thought I had given enough quotations to show that his own inspector did not feel wholeheartedly in favour of the eventual opinion of the Commission. But be that as it may, we in Staffordshire feel that this Order—which emasculates Staffordshire, and puts in a series of county boroughs which, with a little thought, could be avoided—is a bad Order. For that reason, I do not feel that I can support it.

11.58 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: I do not want to delay the House for very long, but I must say that I appreciate all the delicacy of a pachyderm with which the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) has evaded the political issue. When this Order is passed, there will neither be dancing in the streets nor will Staffordshire cease as a county to exist. I think that we should moderate our language when talking about the realities of local government and how to make it effective. Staffordshire existed long before the Act of 1881, and will go on long after the right hon. Gentleman and myself have been eventually passed to the grave or rejected by our electorates.
The fact that Staffordshire, at the moment, is quite clearly in a situation where the present organisation can no longer effectively continue to exist. That was not due to the inefficiency of any part of the local administration. It was simply that a multiplicity of authorities that had grown up which were no longer competent to deal with the great growth in local government. Any hon. Member who denies this has merely to look at the maps issued by the Commission showing how the various functions of planning, housing, health and education were split and divided so that, in the Black Country,


there was a multiplicity of authorities which simply could not, however willing and good the individuals were, prove effective.
Therefore, when the hon. Gentleman says that this Order brings about the division of the north of Staffordshire from the south, I reply that whatever plan was adopted, this would be inevitable. It is inevitable, whether we adopt the plan of a continuous county based on the Black Country or the plan of a large continuous county based on the Birmingham area. The plan involving the extended county districts is the most inefficient form of administration conceivable.
To those who say that this is a challenge to the smaller unit, I say that the greatest challenge to the smaller unit was the enlarged county district. Not only has there grown up a sense of uncertainty, but all the inevitable struggles between various local authorities have been exacerbated. The important thing is to bring this debate to an end tonight and get on with the essential job of making these local authorities fully effective.
I have a final point to make, which is parochial, and affects the northern part of the county. I beg the Minister for a better transitional arrangement in connection with the finances. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, an application was put forward by the county council, or by parts of it, in the hope that the transitional sluice point would be 5d. rather than 6d. and the transitional period eight rather than four years. Judging from the experience of London, I believe that this is a reasonable proposition. I also hope that the right hon. Gentleman will look seriously at the question of the allocation of funds as between the various authorities and will see that this is done in a reasonable way to meet the desires of those of my constituents who live in the northern part of the county.
I am sure that the time has come, after six years of debate, for this Order to go through. It is one of the most complicated patterns of local government which exist in the Black Country. Of all the possible solutions, of the continuous county, of the various propositions put forward by the Staffordshire County Council, the most effective—given the circumstances, given the fact of the enormous size and power of Birmingham

lying to the south and the quite different character of the rest of the county to the north—these large county borough councils must be the easiest and best solution, based as they are on the traditional seats of power, influence and prosperity in the Black Country. This is a difficult question, I know, but, looking at all the alternatives, I am convinced that this is the best possible solution.

12.3 a.m.

Mr. Robert Edwards: We are discussing at this late hour an issue of tremendous importance. It involves a million people in the Black Country, the whole future of local government covering a million people.
I do not think that the fact that it has taken six years for this Order to be debated in this House is any discredit to our democratic practices. It seems rather strange that we are debating for the first time this issue, these revolutionary changes in local government, affecting the whole of the Black Country. If people are proud of their local government, if they have a strong sense of civic pride and if the local authorities are to disappear as if they never existed, people are entitled to use all the machinery that our democracy allows them to ventilate their grievances. I do not think any evil consequences arise for British democracy by delaying wrong decisions for such a long period.
I know that the Minister has a very difficult task. I have read the speech he made on 22nd September of this year at the Local Government Annual Conference at Torquay. I learn on studying his speech that he has not made up his mind about the future structure of local government. He is still thinking aloud. Indeed, he remarks on the fact that even before the decision was established for the reform of local government in the West Midlands the Home Secretary had indicated that this form of local government structure would not serve the police force and that larger units had to be established. In the very same speech the Minister indicated that what we were doing now was only the beginning of vast changes which he envisaged in local government.
It is fantastic that the House should be discussing an Order that establishes in a very permanent way indeed five county boroughs for the West Midlands


area when the Minister himself told a vast conference at Torquay only a few weeks ago that this is not the last word but that the Government had other ideas about the future of local government.
Local government is in the melting pot. We have to decide new forms of local government finance. We are experimenting in regionalisation. We have the experiment here in Greater London, with the Greater London Authority acting as a kind of large area authority and with boroughs operating within the Greater London Authority. We have a two-tier system here in Greater London. We have it because it was considered, advisedly or otherwise, that the two-tier system was the best because there were all kinds of functions in a great congested area that no single borough or county borough could possibly operate. Yet, in spite of what we are doing here in Greater London, the Order proposes an entirely different structure for the Black Country.
What will be the effect of the order on local government in the Black Country? Five borough councils and seven district councils will disappear. Some of these borough and district councils have a much better record of social advance than the larger county boroughs which will absorb them. My Borough Council of Bilston, for example, since 1945 has built almost twice as many houses per thousand of its population as the County Borough of Wolverhampton has. One of my urban councils—Coseley —has built almost twice as many houses per thousand of its population as the County Borough of Dudley has.
The small, effectively organised borough and urban councils of the Black Country are very efficient. The area has a special peculiarity. It is not like an area in Surrey, Sussex or Yorkshire. This is the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. This is where men blasted ironstone and brought it together with coal to make iron and steel. Towns and villages grew up around the factories. It was all unorganised and unplanned and the old maxim, "Where there's muck, there's money" dominated the whole area.
Since the end of the war new councils with new ideas have cleared away the rubble and slag heaps. They have beautified and nurtured and have great pride in their work. One of the local

councils, that of Coseley, which is to disappear has the motto "Fellowship is life, lack of fellowship is death". That is the spirit of that community. What is to happen to that fine community in this reorganisation? It is to be divided into three parts. One goes into Wolverhampton, another into Dudley, and another into West Bromwich.
Another district council in my constituency, that of Sedgley, has a fine record of social advance and has built houses right into what countryside there is in the area. It has planted trees and created green grass where none existed before. It is a great struggle to get trees and grass to grow in the Black Country. It is a different world from Surrey and Sussex. The Commission went up to the Black Country and thought that by applying itself to a ruler and a map it could create new communities. There was complete lack of understanding of the way in which the Black Country had developed historically and of the community spirit to be found there.
Another area in my constituency, where 850 houses were built by the Borough of Bilston is to disappear into the County Borough of Walsall. The playing fields of Bilston are in that little corner. They are to go right out of the community into the county borough. There has been no serious understanding of the community in the drafting of these proposals. We are all agreed that the existing forms of local government are inadequate for the times and no local authority, no councillor and no chairman of a borough in the Black Country would suggest that the existing structure should remain as it. But we are interested in a structure which represents the Black Country as a whole. Once, under this Order, we establish five county boroughs there, we shall have five concentrated local government vested interests which will make improvement or new structures for the future quite impossible. There will be such power of resistance that the new ideas the Minister has for regionalisation and larger authorities will not be possible.
This is not to say that I am arguing the case for bigness. In my view, there is far too much bigness in the world, as there is far too much industrial concentration in fewer and fewer hands, far


too much concentration on mass propaganda, and far too much government by television. We are becoming ants in an anthill. It is no bad thing to have smallness, neatness and efficiency. It is not progress to aim at getting 100 per cent. efficiency out of bigness if, at the same time, all the humanity of a community is lost. In my view, therefore, the whole idea of centralisation leading to the managerial revolution rather than the social revolution of ideas needs far more criticism than it is receiving today. There is a danger in too much tidiness, too much pressure for efficiency, too much remote control and planning from the centre, and too little decentralisation, too little consideration for the community.
We must think and think again before making decisions of this kind which will cause revolutionary changes in the community of the Black Country and create new forms of local government which none of us believes will last very long. For these reasons, I oppose the Order.

12.17 a.m.

Mr. John E. Talbot: I shall not find it easy to express the bitterness and dislike with which the threatened local government areas in the West Midlands view the Order. When I became the Member for Brierley Hill in 1959 I hoped that I might be here to see that large urban district, with a population of over 58,000, attain borough status, for many smaller places had done so. Instead, it seems that, if the House approves this Order, I shall have the melancholy duty of watching its dissolution.
Is it realised how deep is the feeling in the Black Country for one's own place? It will not be a satisfactory solution for Brierley Hill's economic future to have it administered from Dudley, some distance away. In the last few years, with the sanction of the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors, a large new council house, with an assembly hall and offices, has been built, at great cost, in Brierley Hill. Now, it will look like a royal palace in a republican country, useless for the purpose for which it was designed. It will probably end up as one of the proliferating offices for the vastly increasing Government departments which are being fastened upon us by the Government's general policy.
According to Parliamentary convention, opposing the Order as I do, I should

attack the Minister. But I do not feel that I can properly do so, except in a small degree. The right hon. Gentleman's responsibility for the Order is minimal. When the right hon. Gentleman obtained his office just over a year ago he found the gun ready loaded and pointing at the target. All he had to do was pull the trigger. I believe there is very much more to explain in this matter than is within his Ministerial experience. There has been a long-prepared and deep-seated intention, with the answer already known and justified in advance. A well-organised and expensive charade has been staged to justify a decision already made.
The members of the Commission were well-intentioned and able, but many knew only a small amount about local government and it had a strong Southern and pro-Establishment membership. I do not believe that anyone on the Commission came north of a line drawn on the map from the Severn to the Wash. They came to the country, took one look and found it something that, to a smooth Southerner, was appalling. One can see that attitude from the Report's very first page. Tucked away in a footnote are these words:
… we have used the term 'Black Country, except where the text otherwise requires, as a convenient shorthand term for the special review area other than Birmingham, Solihull, Sutton Coldfield and Meriden parishes, although we appreciate that the outer districts differ in many respects from those at the core of the Black Country.
Those words are on page 1. By the time the Commission got to page 10 it had completely forgotten all about that.
The Urban District of Tettenhall, part of the area I represent, has no industry. It is purely residential and is entirely different from Wolverhampton and will be ruined if it is put into Wolverhampton because it will be administered by people with no respect for its traditions. It is not in the Black Country and should not have been treated in an Order or inquiry which dealt with the Black Country.
I admit that it is a small place. It has a population of 15,000. But it should have been joined with the Rural District of Seisdon, to which it belongs, thereby forming an authority which would have a population of about 55,000 or 60,000 and still be capable of growth. I put that solution not just to one Minister but


several. It would have entirely satisfied the district and yet produced an efficient and convenient authority which could have been under Staffordshire County Council as a second-tier authority. It would have satisfied the local government aspirations of its residents.
But up the Commission came and took one look at the Black Country. It saw small houses, pit mounds, semi-derelict canals, factories whose external appearance belies the value of the work done inside. It saw hardy, forthright people, often speaking with a strong dialect defeating the understanding of Southerners, and strong in their loyalties. We seem to be divided into two parts. "We" are the ordinary people; "they" are the Government officials and inspectors. And it is "they" who have chosen. But the distinction is not appreciated in my area.
However, "they" have won. The Commission completely misunderstood the loyalties to church, chapel and town hall. Our towns and urban districts have grown up from village life and have always looked inwards to the village for everything they have sought. They are strong communities, as the inspectors found. They can find people of adequate calibre to administer them from their own people and they do not need to send to country boroughs for experts to do it for them. They have the resources to pay officials adequate to the tasks they undertake to carry out.

Mr. R. W. Brown: I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument very closely, but I draw his attention to the fact that his is precisely the argument of the great majority of London boroughs at the time of the setting up of the Greater London Council. I cannot recall how the hon. Gentleman voted at that time. Although those were the arguments, the House forced the proposals through.

Mr. Talbot: I am interested in that interjection and I shall have something to say about the London Government Act a little later.
These loyalties are local. There will never be loyalty from Brierley Hill for the County Borough of Dudley. There will never be a loyalty from Tettenhall for the vast County Borough of Wolverhampton. We believe that what we have

created and worked for is worth preserving. By the words of the Minister's inspector, as the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) has said—and I do not want to repeat them—it is plainly proven, if it were possible to create judicial proof, that the Black Country authorities are both efficient and convenient. They are efficient and they have been found so. They are convenient because the people who live there want them.
It might be thought—wrongly, of course —that in terms of British government, when absolute power is given to a Minister, that a report of this nature would cause a Minister to think again. I do not mean only the right hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman). I am now talking about the Conservative Minister and my accusations and complaints are as much against the Minister of my own party as against the present Minister. It might have been thought that, with all the factual evidence created and assembled by the Minister's inspector, the Minister would think that there was something in this evidence. But, no! There was a scheme and the scheme had to go through and it would not have mattered if the inspector had actively reported that the county boroughs were incapable of doing the job, for a scheme on the lines of the Order would still have gone through.
I detected in the Minister's speech a feeling that it was improper to delay the course of Ministerial action by going to the High Court, as though delaying the Order by two years was some form of anti-social conduct. I completely refute that view. Anybody who is sentenced to death is entitled to fight as much as he can. The Conservative Minister concerned was not entitled to claim privilege for information which should have been before the court. If it had been before the court, the judgment of the court might well have been different. The High Court action of the various urban districts was defeated by a trick, but to win by a trick is not really to be successful.
I do not regard this as a political matter. There is remarkable unanimity between the previous and the present Minister, and the Conservative Minister probably has greater responsibility in this matter than the right hon. Gentleman opposite. For two years my right


hon. Friend would not see me about this issue and it was not until I went to see my Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne), to say that I was going into rebellion against the party on the London Government Bill that I got an interview, and I got it within 48 hours. But it was no good. The Minister merely told me that the matter had been decided—and I ask hon. Members to note that it had been decided—and, although he was very sorry, there was nothing he could do about it. That just shows what has happened. Protestations of any kind have been useless. Again and again Ministers have refused to see both deputations from my constituency and other local authorities. They have been determined to force this thing through, and it has been like that from the beginning.
This Order has been in active preparation for some months. The Minister takes it for granted that the House will pass it—we are just rubber stamps and stooges. With the support of the Government Whips I suppose that it can be taken for granted. Any sort of democratic expression of opinion is something which the Minister and his advisers regard as an unimportant matter. We are told that speed is of the essence, that we must get this Order through, for heaven's sake do something, it does not matter how wrong, but do it. I do not think that this is the way in which to treat the inhabitants of a substantial part of the Midlands.
I know that the Minister is a man who has not taken this scheme or anything else, for granted. He has applied a formidable intellectual apparatus to the question. If we can judge by his speeches, which have been quoted by other hon. Gentlemen and from what we know of the right hon. Gentleman's character, he is really thinking about local government reorganisation. Surely it is a mistake to anticipate one's future thoughts by tying oneself, even in one part of England, to a preconceived scheme, which was conceived six years ago. A lot has happened in six years, a lot has happened since the idea of forming not a continuous county but a continuous county borough apparatus was mooted.
I reinforce what the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) has said, that it would be an entire mistake for the House to pass this Order merely because the Minister wants to get something done. The Act, which no doubt has been referred to, of ten talks about efficient and convenient use. They are platitudes. We all want to be efficient, and we all like local government to be efficient, in the same way that we want a bus service past our house, but the stop must not be outside it. This is not efficient, because it is not going to solve any of the problems of the Black Country, it is merely going to aggravate them, by making them larger. It is not convenient, because the people who are the victims of it do not want it and have nothing to do with it, and are satisfied with their present system of local government, improved as it might be by suitable amalgamations. It acts as a block on the future consideration of local government functions. It is unpopular and the only people to speak for are those in the Ministerial dictatorship itself.
Wales has escaped, and so has Rutland. I wonder how that was done. The Minister means to have the head of the Black Country on a charger, as some evidence that something has been done. Minister after Minister, one promoted, one knifed, one time-expired and the present Minister, have danced to the tune of a powerful influence; they have listened to no one but their own Department. They have been deaf to representations from back benchers on both sides of the House; they have ignored the representations of their own inspectors. If the Minister succeeds, and I hope that he will not, in carrying this Order through the House tonight, he will add one more title of fame to the reputation he already possesses—"he wrecked the Midlands".

12.35 a.m.

Mr. John Homer: None of the hon. Members who have spoken in opposition to the recommendations of the Commission have asserted that nothing should be clone in the Black Country. I would ask the House to consider the future problems of this area. There is an enormous job to be done in urban development and renewal and one of the specific references made by the inspector at the inquiry was


directed towards the future tasks facing the local authorities.
I am informed that one-tenth of the whole of the derelict industrial land in this country is concentrated in the Black Country. There are, in this area, hundreds of acres of derelict land to be reclaimed. The problem of reclamation, of renewal, of making good the scars, the blemishes, which the Industrial Revolution left so deeply on this area to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bilston (Mr. Robert Edwards) referred, is one which, in my view, cannot adequately be undertaken by local authorities as they at present exist.
It is perfectly true that there is in this area a very deep-rooted feeling of local attachment. It is quite astonishing that within, perhaps, a few hundred yards of one another, there can still be found people with quite different phraseologies and different dialects, developed over the hundreds of years in which separate settlements have existed. However, I believe that those who fear that this reorganisation of local government structure will remove these qualities of strong local life are hardly justified by the experience in other parts of the country. Consider Stoke-on-Trent, for instance. Who could argue that the strong local feelings of Hanley or Longton or Burslem have been destroyed by the imposition upon them of one single county borough, which has done so much, and is continuing to do so much, to relieve some of the problems left by the Industrial Revolution in that part of the Midlands?
While saving that, I must confess that I have seldom seen a report presented with so little enthusiasm even by its authors. The Report of the Commission makes the point that
There can be no ideal solution to this problem.
It says that
Any proposals for change must therefore be looked at to see what are the probable gains and losses and to decide where the balance of advantage lies.
I am obliged, I feel, to refer again to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Stone.

Mr. Snow: Lichfield and Tamworth. Lichfield produced Dr. Johnson. Tam-

worth produced Robert Peel. It has nothing at all to do with Stone.

Mr. Homer: I beg my hon. Friend's pardon. I apologise.
My hon. Friend pointed out the positive aspects of the arguments presented to the inspector who heard the appeal, and he gave the House the comments the inspector made on those points. I am sure he will not be surprised if I refer to the other aspects to which the inspector referred, such as
The multiplicity of authorities has led to confusion, delay and a feeling of frustration … and the division of the area between counties and county boroughs has forced the local authorities to plan on a basis which does not correspond to the fundamental planning needs … Our many discussions … left us in no doubt that the local administration of county services … has often resulted in confusion to the ordinary ratepayer and a sense of frustration in the district councils and their staffs.
… the administrative arrangements forced on Staffordshire have produced delays, duplication of effort and a feeling of frustration.
Not all the local authorities … have fully realised the true nature of this problem and the scale on which it must be tackled.
That was referring to urban renewal.
We met a number of able men among the members of the Black Country district councils but there are not enough of them.
I must say how pleased I am that my right hon. Friend the Minister is to wind up this debate, because the House is entitled to ask him to deal at a little length with the statement, to which other hon. Members on this side have referred, in which, a few weeks ago, in dealing with the West Midlands Commission Report, he linked the scheme with the foreshadowing of further developments in local government reconstruction. Local authority representatives who have spoken to me have emphasised their desire to find out what the Minister has in mind. Have they to go through this agonising process of reconstructing their own authorities, shortly to find themselves plunged again into a large-scale and widespread review? I should like my right hon. Friend, when he winds up the debate, to tell us what he had in mind when speaking to the Association of Municipal Corporations Conference a few weeks ago.
There are two specific aspects to which I have particular attachment. I must confess that I am wholly out of agreement with the suggestion that the county


boroughs should be obliged to assist the Staffordshire County Council in the transitional period, in which they will of necessity suffer a quite substantial diminution of their rate value, with corresponding loss of their annual revenue.
I have particularly in mind the Borough of Oldbury, which I have the honour to represent. Oldbury is not in Staffordshire—it never has been; it is part of Worcestershire. The Oldbury Borough Council, Smethwick Borough Council and the Borough Council of Rowley Regis came together in the early days of the discussion and agreed on the formation of the County Borough of Warley. Incidentally, so that the record should be accurate, let me say that as a result of this inordinate delay, such support and enthusiasm as might have existed in the early days for the County Borough of Warley has sadly diminished and the local authority representatives of Rowley Regis—as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson) would say if he were present—are no longer in support of it. In my Borough of Oldbury there is no support for it. Nevertheless, originally that proposition for a new County Borough emerged from the local authorities themselves.
The local authorities to be created are to be obliged to make a contribution to the Staffordshire County Council for some years. In these circumstances, if it can be established that aid should be forthcoming—and I agree that it should be forthcoming—to the Staffordshire County Council, truncated as it must be, my feeling is that aid should come, not from the local authorities who will be faced in any event with new rate burdens, but from the Treasury and my right hon. Friend's Department.
I know that the House will forgive me for making this next point. There has been reference to the police. It has been put to us that even before the Order came before the House, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary was insisting that the newly-created local authorities should not be police authorities but that there should be a combination. There is much merit in this.
If I may speak on behalf of my old service, the fire service, I think that in this situation we have reached an

absurdity. At present, five fire authorities are involved in the conurbation. On 1st April there will be six fire authorities. How on earth anyone could argue that as a result of the reconstruction of local government we should add to the proliferation of fire authorities and that that is efficient, I cannot see.
I must say to my right hon. Friend that there is the strong feeling in the fire service that we are taking a backward step and that this is one of the resultant effects of the reorganisation scheme which ought to be stopped. We think that it can be stopped, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will look at the problem of the fire service with his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary as they have looked at the Police forces.
There is profound disagreement in the Black Country. There are strong protagonists of the scheme, and there are many people who feel that it will be a sad day when they see their own localities merged into larger authorities. It is causing much heart searching and bitter misgivings. I would say to my right hon. and hon. Friends and to hon. Gentlemen opposite who may share those misgivings that, for the benefit of the people of the Black Country, for the benefit of the local authority administrators, and for the benefit of the new local authority representatives who will be coming into positions of authority and responsibility to launch these schemes next year, we ought to get on with the job. We ought not to delay it further.
I trust that the points which have been made will be considered by my right hon. Friend. There are answers which are called for to quite serious questions. But I earnestly hope that many of the great tasks which are still waiting to be done in the Black Country will be done more speedily, more efficiently and more democratically as a result of the steps that are now to be taken.

12.47 a.m.

Mr. James Dance: I am quite certain that there is a great deal to be said about the Order which the Minister is putting forward tonight. However, there are objections, and my objection is entirely a local one inasmuch as it affects all the people who are living in Hollywood, part of whose land is proposed to be taken over and put into Birmingham.
I know that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister has already got a petition which has been delivered to him, signed by 90 per cent. of the people affected. That is a very high percentage, and it means that there is no question of it being a party matter. It is a completely general one, and the signatories of it take very great exception to the proposal.
I would like to remind the Minister very briefly what they say:
We, the householders and electors of the area affected, hereby state our strongest objection to the proposed county revision, the effect of which would be to transfer the administration of the area from the Rural District Council of Bromsgrove to the Council of the City of Birmingham. The objection is made on the following grounds:—1. The present boundary would become illogically distorted and follow no natural line. 2. We are content with the present administration. 3. We consider ourselves to be homogeneous with the Parish of Wythall, and wish to retain this identity. 4. We see no improved benefits to the ratepayers which are likely to result from the proposed change. 5. There is no possibility of extensive development in the area.
I have before me a map, and on it hon. Members will see a green line which represents the present boundary. It will be seen that it is not exactly an obvious line to take and to foam a tongue of land running into Worcestershire. I cannot see how it can be said to tidy things up in any way, because, as I have said, it will merely produce a tongue of land extending into Worcestershire. Hollywood does not want it, and I am informed that Birmingham itself does not want it. After all, there is no possibility of development in the area, because there is no room for housing.
Over many years there has been a series of public inquiries, some into proposals to take away much larger areas of land from Worcestershire into Birmingham. Each time the Minister has turned down the proposals. In other words, he has upheld the objections.
I wish to refer to the new town of Redditch which, as the Minister no doubt knows, is in course of preparation by the New Towns Commission Development Corporation. There has been much heart-searching over the desirability of this new town, but we felt that something must be done to help the people of Birmingham with their overspill. We decided almost unanimously that it was

right to approve the new town. However, we did so with certain reservations.
I should like to quote from a submission I made to the public inquiry which was held on 8th to 10th January, 1964, about the whole question of the new town. This statement was made after due consultation with many people in practically the whole area concerned. I said:
And now, Mr. Lightfoot "—
he was the inspector from the Ministry—
I will come to my reservations. While I have already said that I support these proposals,"—
for the new town—
unless these reservations are, anyhow, accepted in principle, my support would turn to bitter opposition—possibly more bitter than some of the opposition you have already heard.
First of all, it is quite essential that the Green Belt to the north of Redditch shall be sacrosanct. I refer to the area on the boundaries of Birmingham, Wythall and Hollywood. On more than one occasion the City of Birmingham have tried to take over large areas of land in this district for building. We have resisted this and I still maintain that this land is quite vital to the amenities of both Redditch and Birmingham itself. What we must avoid is falling into the trap which our ancestors did of straggling villages and towns, ending up in a vast conurbation such as Birmingham. Therefore, it is quite essential that the land I refer to must remain under the Bromsgrove Rural District Council's jurisdiction. At this moment I would like to ask Mr. Beddowe
—the representative of the Ministry—
whether he can give us some assurance that if, and when, the plans for the new Redditch are agreed upon, his Ministry will be able to finalise and make definite the demarcations of the Green Belt on the borders of Birmingham.
There was no exact assurance, but it was generally gathered that that would be agreed to: we went forward and did all we could to assist in the formation of the new town corporation and gave our blessing to the new town.
But Redditch is very close to Birmingham, and if this town suddenly juts out into Worcestershire, where will the matter end? Is this just the start? Will it lead to a little more and a little more? Will the result be what I am so frightened of, the creeping away into the countryside of the city of Birmingham? Like my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths) I ask the Minister to consider what may be only a detail of the whole scheme to see whether he could exclude this part of Worcestershire.
I think that I have proved, by means of the map which I showed the House, that this is not a tidy line to absorb into Birmingham, but an extremely untidy one. If the right hon. Gentleman accedes to this non-party request—we did not know the politics of the people we canvassed, but they all felt very strongly about this—if the Minister can in some way amend this proposal or modify it, I know that he will give satisfaction to a great many British people.

12.55 a.m.

Mrs. Renée Short: At the beginning of his speech tonight my right hon. Friend outlined the time table of the proposals that were started off in 1958, when the local government commission was set up. I have here a letter from the Ministry of Housing and Local Government dated 26th November, 1962, which says that the then Minister—my right hon. Friend's predecessor—hoped that the new proposals would start on 1st April, 1964. That would be the appointed day. We now find that there has been a two-year delay, and that it will not be until April, 1966 that, provided we do the right thing tonight, the new county boroughs and new local authorities will take over.
My feeling is that this delay has been intolerable for local government, and for officers and members of local authorities in the West Midlands area. I am not here referring to my own authority. Even those who have opposed the proposals put forward are saying that they must now have a decision, and that the delay has damaged local government; that it has caused uncertainty and difficulty for local authorities, and for the officers of local authorities, and that it is unfair for the delay to continue any longer.
What the people of the West Midlands want is good, efficient, honest local government. My right hon. Friend's decision to go forward with the proposals is the only decision that could have been taken in the circumstances. I do not believe that, in all honesty and sincerity, he could have said that he will throw out these proposals and start the whole round all over again, with the delay and uncertainty that this would cause.
My hon. Friend the Member for Old-bury and Halesowen (Mr. Horner) dealt with some of the problems facing the

West Midlands area. We have awful problems concerning urban renewal, the development of the central areas of towns, slum clearance, the resiting of industry and doing away with what is old and worn out in an antiquated, creaking local government machine that is not adequate for the industrialised area…the go-ahead, modern area—that exists in the West Midlands. We need a new look, and my right hon. Friend's proposals for the five large county boroughs will enable us to make progress with these problems. In spite of what my hon. Friend the Member for Bilston (Mr. Robert Edwards) says, these problems exist.
I want to take up the point made by the hon. Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Talbot), who said that there is a tremendous community spirit. Of course there is a tremendous community spirit. This exists all over the country, in every area. Whenever there is a suggestion that local government boundaries should be altered we get this hoary old argument about community spirit, just as we get it from the protagonists of the county councils. All these arguments are always put forward.
The county districts as they exist today were themselves formed from smaller county districts in the past in which there was a strong local community spirit, and that spirit still exists. There are many thriving independent local communities in the areas within the West Midlands district—the Special Review Area—and I have no doubt that that strong local community spirit will continue to exist even when the five large authorities are formed. I do not feel that we need pay too much attention to the fear that this local community spirit will disappear.

Mr. Talbot: Has the hon. Lady made any investigation into the possibility of community spirit between Tettenhall and Wolverhampton? I can assure her that it is entirely non-existent.

Mrs. Short: I had intended to refer to the hon. Gentleman's remark that there would never be loyalty for the new county borough from the people from Tettenhall to Wolverhampton. That was rather a shocking thing to say, because I think that there would be loyalty and community spirit between all the areas that are to be put into the new country


boroughs, and that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Horner) very eloquently said, we shall work together and create a viable, worth-while local government set-up.
With the large authorities proposed by my right hon. Friend we will be able to take a proper look at the problems of planning, education and local authority health services—to mention only a few. As one who has served on a district council and a county council at the same time, I cannot understand, and I speak from my own experience, why there is so much opposition by these small district and urban district authorities; why they should oppose being promoted up the local government ladder.
That is why my right hon. Friend proposes—that they shall become part of the county borough, where they will be able to control their own affairs without having "big brother", the county council, breathing down their necks. They are now their own housing authorities, but they will be their own planning authorities, education authorities and local authority health authorities, and will be able to look after their own young children and old people. Ambitious local authorities, and ambitious people on local authorities will be given a much more worth-while job to do in local government——

Mr. Eric Lubbock: Is it not true that these smaller local authorities at one time objected to the larger authorities that are proposed under the Order but later altered their case and now say that many of the functions which the hon. Lady mentions, such as planning, would be better carried out over the review area as a whole rather than by these separate county boroughs? I understand that is what the county districts now say.

Mrs. Short: The hon. Member has made one of the points I had intended to deal with; that one of the interesting things about the whole history from 1959 has been the number of times some authorities have swopped horses in midstream. It is a little difficult to keep track of what proposals the different authorities have supported during the years. My hon. Friend the Member for Bilston (Mr. Robert Edwards) said, if I understood him aright, that he would

like my right hon. Friend to look at the whole of the scheme again and get a wide view over the whole area, implying that he was in favour of a large regional authority. I, too, would like to see that development in local government. It is the logical conclusion, and something to which we shall be working.
But my hon. Friend's evidence at the time was in favour of Bilston being kept out of this large area. Bilson wanted to remain as an authoritiy on its own, with an increase of population up to 60,000, though I am not quite sure where it was to get that 60,000 from. My hon. Friend now puts forward a different proposal and, as the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) has said, many different views have been put forward by the different authorities involved in the whole of the review area. If, as I hope, we accept tonight the proposals for the five county boroughs, that will not preclude the setting up of a regional authority in some years' time. I think that the county boroughs that are to be set up could later on well form the lower tier of a two-tier regional authority.
I very much hope that the House will accept my right hon. Friend's proposals. They are the result of exhaustive inquiries. There were three possible choices. One was for the status quo—the kind of one-and-a-half tier system we have now. The second was for the division into five county boroughs now proposed. The third was for the continuous county with some two-tier structure within it. The Commission has accepted the second, that of the five county boroughs. My feeling is that this is the correct proposal and I hope that the acrimony, bitterness and dissidence that have been created by this long-drawn-out procedure, by litigation on many occasions on points that really had, as far as I could see, very little validity and which has wasted time and ratepayers' money, will now disappear.
I hope that we shall be able to create a good and viable system of local government in the West Midlands and that we shall be able to co-operate and work together, and settle down to take forward that kind of community spirit which I am sure exists, into the new authorities.

1.6 a.m.

Sir Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: I thought I detected in the speech of the hon. Lady the Member for


Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Renée Short) some enthusiasm for further local government reform. I rather gathered that the Minister too has been interesting himself in further local government reform. If so, I should think that he has had a rather wearing evening, because it seems to me that the prevailing tone of the speeches in this debate has been that perhaps there may be something to be said for some reform in the future but that there is nothing to be said for reform tomorrow.
We have lived with the matter one way or another for many years, and I say unhesitatingly that I support this Order. It is easy for me to say this because the authorities which I represent are to continue. Therefore, I am not in the position of my hon. Friend the Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Talbot) or the hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. Robert Edwards) whose authorities will disappear. The position of the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) is slightly different. His constituency remains the same but the Staffordshire County Council of which it is part becomes smaller.
Nevertheless, it is right to issue a warning that, despite the alarmist tone of the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tam-worth who talked about the polarisation of the population of Staffordshire, it is not the intention of the Walsall Council, so far as I understand it, to destroy the village greens at Willenhall and Darlaston or to try to introduce mechanisation to Wednesbury. It is not intended to upset the way of life of those people simply to let them enjoy the benefits of a larger authority. We should be at some pains not to suggest that as a result of a change in the form of local government there will be a change for the worse in the life of the people in the areas concerned.
The debate has gone on for long enough arid I do not want to discuss any more generalities. I wish to draw attention to a specific point. I refer to Article 44 under the heading "Main drainage". The Minister skated rather quickly over the subject of main drainage. I wonder whether he has given the same attention to the drainage considerations as he has given to some of the others. I suspect that he has not, and it might be worth his while to do so.
It is the intention of this Order to set up two main drainage authorities, one, a very small one, called the Upper Stour Main Drainage Authority, and the other one, being an enlargement of the existing Birmingham, Tame and Rea District Drainage Board, which is to be called the Upper Tame Main Drainage Authority. Despite their romantic names, the Tame and Rea are not rivers from which anglers delight to catch fish or which add much to the amenities of the countryside. In fact, at the Wolver-hampton inquiry in September, 1962, the Tame was described by a spokesman of the Birmingham, Tame and Rea District Drainage Board as
nothing more than an open sewer, and I am sure you will hear from the River Board that for practically the whole of this area the River Tame is entirely devoid of any life whatever.
In case it' is felt that anglers will now have an interest in the future of the River Tame, I should state that I am informed that an experiment was made less than a year ago in which some especially hardy fish were put into a tank into which water from the River Tame was poured and apparently they survived for 24 hours. It is clear that it is not a question of amenity at all. It is a question simply of the efficiency of the drainage operation.
At present the Birmingham, Tame and Rea district authority is responsible for Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield, Solihull, Smethwick, part of Oldbury, Bromsgrove, parts of Bromsgrove rural district, parts of Aldridge rural district, and parts of Meriden rural district. It is now the intention to include in its responsibilities West Bromwich, Tipton, Wednesbury, Bilston, Wednesfield, Walsall, Willenhall, and Darlaston—in fact, all the enlarged boroughs of the new conurbation.
I drew attention to this because the Birmingham authority is the largest part. If Birmingham is put in with these other authorities, it will become a sort of whale-sardine pie. The fact is that the sardines will have no say in the management of drainage matters, which are of considerable importance to them. As representation goes by rateable value, Birmingham will dwarf all the other authorities concerned. Dr. Jenkins of the Birmingham, Tame and Rea Board says that his Board has been forced into spending £40 million to meet the requirements of the Trent


River authority and that this heavy expenditure is to achieve an effluent of acceptable standards and is really a measure of the Board's neglect since 1877. A very large element of that cost will fall upon the new authorities which are now being brought into the scope of the enlarged Birmingham, Tame and Rea authority.
The point I put to the Minister is that even now he should satisfy himself that the enlarged authority is the very best way of dealing with this problem. If he feels that the enlarged authority still is the best way of dealing with it, it might possibly justify differential rating for the authorities which are not concerned with repairing the damage which has already been suffered, or alternatively the formation of a separate drainage authority.
I do not suppose the Minister will want to say anything about this tonight. He has plenty of other things to answer. I should like to leave the thought with him, in the hope that in the watches of the morning inspiration will come to him.

1.13 a.m.

Mr. William Wells: I do not wish to follow the honourable Baronet the Member for Walsall, South (Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid) too deeply in fishing, either for whale or for sardine, in the troubled waters of the Tame. The broad effect of the proposals enshrined in Article 44 of the Order is, as I understand it, that the ratepayers of the Black Country will contribute some £13 million towards rectifying the inadequacies of the Birmingham Board's administration over a number of years. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to look into this a little more closely than has happened heretofore. The proposals enshrined in Article 44 have derived a somewhat specious respectability from an inaccurate statement in the Commissioner's Report. This was to the effect that the Institute of Sewage Purification has submitted views on the reorganisation of local government in the area. In fact the Institute, when asked, said it had not been consulted and had not expressed any views. I hope that it will be possible when the Order is passed for my right hon. Friend to look into this matter a little further.
As for the Order itself, we have heard many conflicting views tonight, but

although one has sympathy with authorities that are disappearing into oblivion and with those who served faithfully and well on those authorities for many years, we are concerned tonight with the services which are to be provided for the public. The practical question which we have to answer is whether any better solution has been put forward than that which has been enshrined in the Commission's Report. I differ a little from my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Horner) in some of his criticisms of the Report. I do not look so much for enthusiasm as a quality in the Report as for information. The information is there and I believe that my right hon. Friend has drawn the right conclusions from it and I hope that they will come into effect without further delay.

1.17 a.m.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: I apologise for intervening at this late hour but I want to put on record that I believe that there was a better solution to this problem—not that I have any hope of influencing the Minister's mind at this stage in the progress of the Order and after the many years which have been occupied in the consideration of this matter by the Commission and by successive Ministers. I do so in the hope that the Minister will give us an undertaking that this solution in the West Midlands will not form the pattern for the rest of the country.

Mr. Crossman: No solution of any kind in local government forms a pattern for any other part of the country. Obviously, the Minister takes each part on its merits, and heaven knows there are differences which make each part unique. I can give a guarantee that no deduction is to be drawn from this for any other part of the country.

Mr. Lubbock: I am glad to hear that. It relieves the anxiety which I felt when I heard the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) saying that the Minister had had the same kind of solutions to these problems in his mind for years and when the hon. Member quoted in support of that conclusion a speech made by the Minister in 1951.
There are services which are better carried out in wider areas than the county boroughs which are being created by this


Order. The solution adopted for Greater London, while it had many defects which were criticised when the Measure went through the House had certain merits which——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): Order. The hon. Member is going wide of the Order which we are discussing now.

Mr. Lubbock: I was only making a comparison, but of course I bow to your Ruling, Sir Samuel. I should like to refer to only one detail and that is the case of the fire service. While the police service proposals have been modified from the recommendations of the Commission I understand that the fire services will still be the responsibility of the county boroughs. I am informed by persons working in the fire service that this is detrimental to efficiency and that they would far prefer a solution whereby the fire service was integrated throughout the whole area.

Mr. Homer: The hon. Gentleman may not have been in the Chamber when I made the point that there will, in fact, be more fire services than at present. The whole process is put in reverse.

Mr. Lubbock: Yes, I listened most carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said, and the point is reinforced by what is said by a correspondent of mine in the fire service. He tells me—I think that he has the support of his colleagues —that the future needs of the service demand larger, not smaller, units.
I hope that the Minister will deal with this point. My correspondent says that it is regrettable that advantage is not being taken of the reorganisation of local government in the West Midlands to produce a fire service organisation suitable to the needs of the future. Perhaps it is not yet too late and the Minister will be able to assure us that he has something else in mind that will produce a solution for the fire services in the West Midlands Review Area which will be acceptable to the people working in the service and give the best possible service to the population.

1.21 a.m.

Mrs. Margaret Thatcher: I shall not detain the House very long, for I am conscious of the comments made by

my hon. Friends the Members for Walsall, South (Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid) and for Brierley Hill (Mr. Talbot), representing as I do a constituency south of a line from the Wash to the Severn. But, of course, the decision we have to make tonight is a decision of the whole House and, although there are many hon. Members who do not know the area well, we have to come to a conclusion on the Order in general.
In spite of the many opinions and the bitterness which has been expressed, I remind the House of one paragraph in its Report in which the Commission said:
Nothing is ever changed without regret or loss, and we have respected the district representatives from this area for their sturdy independence and determination".
That shows that, even though the Commission decided in the end to advance proposals which it knew some of the small districts would not like, it had tremendous respect for the community spirit and for the people who served those districts.
We have to make up our minds on the broad general question before us. I am sure that the Minister will consider the points of detail which have been raised by my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite. One general principle is clear. We cannot tonight rehear the whole case. That has already been done for us elsewhere. We have to decide whether to go ahead or, as the hon. Lady the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renee Short) said, send the whole thing back and restart the process.
It is material to consider the process which has been gone through already. For two and a half years, the Commission sat to consider what proposal should be advanced. In arriving at its conclusion, it was meticulous to consult every authority and every interested party at every stage. It is clear from the speeches tonight that everyone has read every single word of the Report.
After the Commission, there was an inquiry, the purpose of which was not in any way an appeal but was to inquire into the objections and to report upon them faithfully to the Minister. This inquiry did its job extremely well. It had 50 hearings. Seventy witnesses were called, 73 proofs of evidence were submitted, 44 maps were produced, 12 Q.C.s


were briefed who, together with 21 counsel and two town clerks examined, cross-examined and re-examined the witnesses. So I think that we might all agree that whatever we are quarrelling about it has been a very good thing for the lawyers.

Mr. Crossman: And that is not the whole story.

Mrs. Thatcher: As the right hon. Gentleman says, that is not the whole story. The decision then came forward to the Minister and, following his decision to come forward with the Order, there were another three years of judicial proceedings. I make no complaint about that. If any local authority is against any action proposed by a Minister it obviously should take every course available to it to express its views.
But I do not believe that the position has changed materially since the decision was taken by the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph). Against that background, it stands to reason that most of the objections and points which could possibly have been taken have been said and re-said and taken into account in the Order which the right hon. Gentleman is asking us to approve.
I have, therefore, listened very carefully to the speeches—as I always do—to see if any fresh arguments were advanced. I think that possibly there have been two. The first was that, as six years have elapsed since the beginning of the Commission's work, it is now outdated. I do not accept that. Local government changes are usually designed for a longer period than six years and if it is already outdated then it would have been outdated had the Order come into operation at the time when it should have done.
There may be something in the passage of time but only if, during the extra time which has elapsed, there have been events which materially changed the position. If there had been, I think that the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) would have adduced them to the House and advanced them in a very long list. But he did not do so and therefore I think that probably there have not been any very large material changes.

Mr. Snow: I would merely comment that the passage of time has had no effect at all upon the hon. Lady.

Mrs. Thatcher: I knew that the hon. Gentleman was a member of the Society for the Protection of Birds but I assumed that he meant the feathered kind.
The second argument that has been advanced has been dealt with most effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Sir H. d'AvigdorGoldsmid), but it is an argument which occurs quite frequently. It is that, because we hope to do something radical, we know not what, at some time in the future, that is a good reason for not doing anything now. I totally reject that argument and will therefore say nothing further about it.
To those small authorities which I know are somewhat aggrieved by this Order, I would say that I come from an area which has had the experience of being absorbed into a very much larger area. One part of my constituency was an urban district of 25,000 people. It was absorbed into a borough 10 times its size. But the community spirit which was there remains, because community spirit does not necessarily go with administrative boundaries.
Yet the people who were very proud of that small area have been magnanimous enough to serve the larger borough, which has profited greatly from their work, their talents and their experience, and I feel certain that the same thing will happen in this case. We shall give our approval to the Minister—or, at any rate, I shall.

1.30 a.m.

Mr. Crossman: The speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) was so good tempered and charming that she ought to have started the debate in that style. I want to thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for the restraint which they have exerted upon themselves, both on the length of time for which they have spoken, and on their feelings about this matter, because I am well aware that the debate could have lasted a very long time if hon. Members had taken the chance to say all that they genuinely feel about the matter. We have had a very good debate and I will try to answer briefly as many points as possible.
I should like to take the small precise issues first. Both hon. Members for Walsall, the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. William Wells) came here in a formidable bipartisan coalition on drainage and asked a specific question about it. I do not think that there can be any question of going back from the single board to a double board, because the matter was considered at enormous length in the reasons set out for the Minister's decision in 1963; but I am certainly prepared to consider a differential rate very carefully before making the necessary consequential Order. This is something which we shall consider and which we can take from Walsall as one of the products of the debate.
The hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Dance) seemed to be anxious about the decision to permit some kind of incursion into or invasion of the green belt. I looked at the map carefully before coming here and it seemed to me that the boundary was drawn tightly. All we have done is to draw the boundary around Birmingham including in Birmingham the area up to the green belt. I have no intention of going beyond that, because we have laid down the principle of leaving the green belt to the county. I do not think that we can cast maps across the Floor of the House, but my reading of the map does not suggest that there is any cause for alarm.
The hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Peter Griffiths) asked a specific question about the Albion housing estate. This is one of the 30 or 40 property cases in the Order which are disputed. Where-ever possible we get agreement between the two authorities, but this is one of about a dozen where there has been disagreement and we have had to make the decision ourselves. I must say that there is only one housing estate which we have exempted.
It all depends on where the frontiers are drawn, because the estate goes to the authority on whose side of the frontier it is. There was one estate outside the frontier, the Quintin estate, which Birmingham thought should not be transferred to Halesowen, but in that case Halesowen agreed. In this instance there was a dispute between the two authorities

and we adjudicated. I agree that the arguments were extremely finely balanced and that it was a difficult distinction to make. However, on balance I think that we made it rightly in terms of the balance of housing, but I agree that it was not one of those cases in which one knows from the start what the right decision is, and if the hon. Gentleman wants to depute to me, I am certainly prepared to hear the case for this very small area.
Those were the only three particular matters with which I wanted to deal and I will come now to the speeches of the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) and the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Horner). They asked about the financial arrangements and asked why they were different from those for London. I want to make it quite clear that they are different from those of London. In the London example the Home Counties have had to bear the first 5d. of aditional rate burden due to reorganisation. Anything extra was to be paid for entirely by the Greater London Council in the first year following reorganisation and that arrangement was to continue for eight years decreasing by⅛each year.
It was perfectly fair to point out that the arrangements for the Black Country and Staffordshire are different. Staffordshire has to bear the first 6d. of additional rate burden due to reorganisation, the extra to be paid by the five county boroughs and Stourbridge, who receive areas from Staffordshire. This is expected to be the equivalent of a further 6d. rate for Staffordshire. This assistance is to be paid for four years declining by¼ each year. There is no doubt that in London the counties did rather better out of Greater London than is to be the case in the Black Country, but I must point out the difference as between places of greater wealth.
If we had levied on the gainers of the five new boroughs at the same rate at which we levied in London, instead of what London has had to pay, which is roughly Id. rate assistance, the Black Country for what it has gained would have to pay more than the 3d. rate we are making it pay, which is already proportionately rather more than London simply because of relative poverty. The


effect will vary year by year, but I think that in the financial arrangements we have struck a fair bargain which I am prepared to defend. May I also add to his arguments about Staffordshire, that Staffordshire will gain from the rate deficiency grant. In its new status as a county which has had a large area lopped off it, it will have its rate deficiency grant re-assessed, and I reckon that it will get something like 2 per cent. more, which is a considerable sum and which will go some way toward meeting this deficiency.
I now come to the slightly harsher speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Talbot). I thought that he was going to be nice to me but he was pretty severe by the end of his speech. I thought his speech was an almost normal development. He started by saying that if Brierley Hill could be a county borough he would have been happy, and he might have been a county borough man, but since he could not be a county borough man he was going to object to any reorganisation which made anybody else have a county borough. This is a perfectly normal situation to have in local government and it brings me to something else which was said about myself.
I was challenged on statements that I had made in 1951—I am glad that my remarks so long ago are of such importance—during a debate on Luton. It is perfectly true, and I cannot deny it for one moment. I must reveal my past. I was for eight years a councillor on a county borough. Moreover, I have sat for a great many years for a county borough and there is absolutely no concealment of the fact that I have come from the county borough side. It would be very dishonourable and stupid for people to pretend that their background does not give them prejudices, but objectivity consists in being conscious of one's prejudices and overcoming them successfully in action.
All I can say is that a Minister has one great advantage in that he visits a great number of authorities. If there is one thing that I have learned in the course of 12 months it is that there are virtues in different kinds of local government. There are very many more virtues in

rural district council government when it is well run. One of the fascinating facts when one studies local government is to see that, whatever one studies, the county or the county borough, the small or the big, where they are good, they are very very good, and where they are bad, they are fairly horrid. There are enormous differences between good and bad. But there are virtues in all these forms and if there was not virtue there would not be that common passion and integrity in the debate that we are having. These debates are not just debates because we represent different areas; they are debates because we hold different principles on organisation, principles which are incompatible and have the defects of their virtues. This is the difficulty which we have to face.
Another thing said to me by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brierley Hill which was a bit rough was that local opinion was ruthlessly pushed aside by the Commission and by the Ministers. He said that Ministers had refused to receive deputations. I have certainly not refused to receive Members of Parliament; indeed, I have seen several Members concerned with this. They have had access to me and I have discussed it in detail, because I thought it was right to do so. But we are in a semi-judicial capacity as Ministers and if we see one deputation, it is essential to see every deputation, because otherwise we will be, quite rightly, accused of behaving improperly by the Council on Tribunals.
There is a limit to the time which Ministers can spend, especially if a thing has been discussed so long and in such detail. So I think that my predecessors and I were right in saying that once the report was in our hands, the deputations must be over. We must make up our minds on the information we get by ourselves, without any more deputations and pressure groups. I certainly inherited that tradition from my predecessors and I believed that I was wise to maintain it. I followed that by saying that, although I would not receive formal deputations, informal talks with my colleagues in the House were something which I could not be denied as a human being and I profited a good deal by chatting with the hon. Gentleman himself. We had an interesting talk and, although I do not criticise him because of it, our talk together was


very different from the kind of speech which he made this evening.
I think that he made a great mistake in saying what he did about local loyalties, and I am glad my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) took him up. "Well," he said, "it is totally impossible to think of good relationships ever occurring between anybody in Wolverhampton and Tettenhall." I do not think he really meant it. That is the kind of rhetoric one uses. but one does not mean it, because it simply is not true. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen was quite right to remind him of Stoke-on-Trent and how in that great city and the different parts of it there can be—it is quite staggering—such preservation not merely of a few but of so many differences and local loyalties—miraculously preserved. With the greater unity of some services, such as transport, yet we think of the people of Longton and Hanley, with their distinctions, and it is possible to preserve them, and it is the essence of democracy to have unity with diversity within it, and, of course, in local government we want to achieve that.

Mr. Talbot: I never said that there had never been community of interest between Tettenhall and Wolverhampton. What I said was it does not exist now. Surely, we have the authority of one of the greatest of Parliamentarians of all time for saying that "Never" is altogether too far into the future.

Mr. Crossman: I am delighted to hear the hon. Member say that. I think it is a modification of what he said, but let us forget what he said and take instead what he has now said. That was what I was saying—that these "nevers" never do occur. I hope he will agree and that he is going to be a good friend after the decision upon this Order.
I turn now to the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Bilston (Mr. Robert Edwards) and Lichfield and Tam-worth (Mr. Snow). We were all moved by what my hon. Friend the Member for Bilston said, and what he said needed saying here. We need to be reminded, as movingly as he reminded us, of the feelings of local loyalties, and that nowhere are they found more strongly than in the Black Country. It is perfectly true that

there are the passionate feelings of difference there, which I hope will go on whatever local government reorganisation we have. How right he was.
But then he himself revealed in his speech, I think, the problem which we have to tackle and to solve, because he said at one time, and movingly, for he is a very moving speaker, that one must believe in one structure, one unitary structure. for the whole of the Black Country. Having said that, five minutes later he said we could not have anything which struck against the preservation of local loyalty. Of course, he is right. We want unity, preserving our local loyalties.
All I am saying to him is that he should not exclude the possibility that what has been done here is the best method—or the lesser evil, if he prefers it—which the Inspector, the Commission, everybody who has looked at it, accepted. Nobody has found a better method. During this debate no one has put forward any serious alternative to this. Anybody who has studied the reasoning for this can see that despite the powerful arguments—I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Bilston would agree with me—for a huge, two-tier organisation of the kind mentioned by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), it would not be likely to be successful in the Black Country.

Mr. Lubbock: Mr. Lubbock rose——

Mr. Crossman: We are discussing the Black Country, and we do not really want to discuss the problems in general, but of this area.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth was a bit harsh. He was speaking of Staffordshire rather than of small areas, and, of course, he was embittered by the lopping off of 12 units of Staffordshire, but to describe what is left as a rump, a miserable fragment, was a bit doubtful, because the size of Staffordshire with 600,000 population and £21 million of rateable value still surviving makes it quite otherwise. Tam-worth, Rugeley and Lichfield are going to grow. They are prosperous areas. No one can really tell me this is a county which cannot live and prosper, even with the loss it is to suffer. I could quote examples from other parts of the country to show how county authorities have survived which had to merge and suffer


losses far more devastating than Staffordshire suffers in this case.
I now turn to what my hon. Friend said about my Inspector, and this was the one thing he said which made me feel a little angry with my hon. Friend. He made the implication against the Inspector that he had come out on one side of the dispute. He did it by quoting paragraph 63, in which there are listed the contentions of the opponents, but he did not mention paragraph 64, where it is said:
We agree that on the evidence produced at this Inquiry all these contentions except (f) were established or might be inferred…We must, however, enter once again a caveat that the evidence called at the Inquiry was restricted in scope and came from those who objected to the Commission. We must also direct the Minister's attention to the comments of the supporters of the Commission on some of these matters which are reported in paragraphs 37 to 54.
As Minister, I must say that it is very unfair to an inspector whose job is not to come down on one side but to inspect, to see objectively, to give fairly the accounts of the two sides, and to say how much he thinks that the evidence of one side is to be taken at its full value and then the same of the other side.
It is most important to see that the inspector did not give simple support to one side or the other. Indeed, he did his job, which was to leave the Minister to make up his mind having been given an absolutely impartial, detailed and fair balancing of the evidence and the arguments of both sides. His is a monumental Report precisely because it did not do what my hon. Friend imputed that it did.

Mr. Snow: I am sorry if my right hon. Friend was made angry by what I said. His anger is matched by mine, because I think that he has taken a wrong decision. He will, however, recall that when the hon. Lady the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) asked me to read on, which was the remark for which I was waiting, I then quoted from the top of page 5 of the green Report, which quoted the Deputy Chairman as saying that if there was doubt about the advantages, the attitude of the objectors might be decisive.

Mr. Crossman: I think we have got it clear that in quoting that passage, my

hon. Friend left out the section which was a special caveat to say, "I have listed the arguments of the opposition, and I must ask you to refer on another page to the arguments of the supporters and give them also your attention." Had my hon. Friend said that, he would have seen that the inspector did not come down on one side. He was scrupulously giving the arguments of both sides and saying, as he was right to do, "There is substance in the arguments of these sides and my Minister has to study the substance on both sides."
I want briefly to come to the big question that was put to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen, who dealt with the fire services. I agree with my hon. Friend, who is a great expert on fire services and speaks with expert authority. He is right to say that just as it would have been insane to have five police forces—and I am delighted that the Home Office is busy organising the police forces on a semi-regional basis—so it would be insane to have five fire services.
Under the existing law, however, every county borough is entitled to have a fire service. As distinct from the position concerning police, under the existing law, we are not entitled to stop that happening. This is one of those cases in which one asks oneself whether this is something which should be reformed in local government, and it is something in which one might be able to use one's influence, but there is a limit to the Minister's influence when people have the right to do something if they are prepared to do it. That is the situation with regard to fire services.
My hon. Friend's final question was a fair one to ask, and it was touched on also by my hon. Friend the Member for Bilston. I was asked how I related my attitude to the Commission's review and my decision to recommend the Order with a speech I made the other day to the Association of Municipal Corporations at Torquay on long-term reform. Part of my answer has been given by the hon. Lady the Member for Finchley.
Yes, I am convinced that in the long term, or in the medium term over a period not so very long, we need to set up a committee to take a thorough overall look at local government completely afresh. I am, however, a realist. I also


know that that may take some time and that the implementation may take some time. Indeed, it may never be implemented.
We have a Local Government Commission, for example. When I took over as Minister, I found that there were some 50 decisions which my predecessor prudently had not taken. They were waiting to be taken. I understand one's reluctance to take them in an election year, but I took office in the post-election year and I received the legacy of my predecessor's indecision on the subject and I had to deal with a whole mass of decisions. Any Minister would have done the same as my predecessor in the last months before an election.
As I dealt with those cases, I began to form views, going through them one after the other. I became more and more uneasy about the terms of reference within which the Commission had been working. and about the procedures laid down for the Commission. It seems to me that the amount of investigation, the amount of delay and the endless postponements put into the procedures of the Commission have really brought some disrepute on our processes of democracy. I do not think that many people would say that when we set up another commission we ought not to shorten the procedure at some point. There seems to be too much room for inquiry, delay and argument. We overdo it. One can overdo the amount of inquiry that one allows oneself before making up one's mind, and the result is that the facts are chewed over four or five times.
It is true, too, that the Commission and the Minister have had to work within strict terms of reference. The Commission had to accept, for example, the division between county and county borough and all sorts of other matters which an independent commission would have been free to look at. And I had to make all my decisions within the same terms of reference.
Nevertheless, I was warned by my predecessor, and I was not going to destroy the Commission before I was sure that it had finished its work. People want to know desperately if they will get a chance to reform local government in their areas, and there is still work for the Commission to do. I have a pile of jobs awaiting decision, and nothing is more demoralising than having endless discussion and no ultimate decision. It was up to a responsible Minister to do all that he could as fast as he could to end the delay and put people out of their agony by getting local government working again.
There is a virtual suspension of local government while one waits for a decision on the size of an authority, and I had to take a decision for Bath and its environs, just as I had to for the Black Country, although the latter was a big one.
I agree that in the long view we need to take a drastic look at the general terms of reform, but the fatal thing would be to stop all change while looking at a more radical level of decision. We must not make the look for a radical change the excuse for a static attitude towards local government.
I am delighted to feel that much of the bitterness has gone. There is not a great deal of enthusiasm after five years. There cannot be. There is much more acquiescence, and it may be good that people should have low expectations, because they come out better than they expect. I believe that we will get more energy released. We will get higher quality staffs, councils will have more opportunities, and we will get a better quality of councillor.
I am delighted to have had this debate, and I thank the House for it. I now ask it to approve the Order.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the West Midlands Order 1965, dated 3rd November, 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 9th November, be approved.

CONSOLIDATION, &c., BILLS

Lords Message [1st December] relating to the appointment of a Committee on Consolidation Bills, Statute Law Revision Bills and Bills prepared pursuant to the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act 1949, to be considered forthwith.—[Mr. O'Malley.]

Lords Message considered accordingly.

Select Committee of Twelve Members appointed to join with the Committee appointed by the Lords to consider all Consolidation Bills, Statute Law Revision Bills and Bills prepared pursuant to the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act 1949 in the present Session:

Any Memoranda laid pursuant to the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act 1949 and any representations made with respect thereto be referred to the Committee:

Mr. Daniel Awdry, Mr. Ronald Bell, Mr. Anthony Buck, Mr. Charles Doughty, Mr. loan L. Evans, Mr. Reginald Eyre, Mr. Edward Gardner, Mr. A. J. Irvine, Sir Barnett Janner, Mr. Paul B. Rose, Mr. Alan Williams and Mr. William Wilson.

Power to send for persons, papers and records; and to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House:

Three to be the Quorum.—[Mr. O'Malley.]

Message to the Lords to acquaint them with such of the said Orders as are necessary to be communicated to their Lordships.

PRISON, NETHER ALDERLEY

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. O'Malley.]

1.55 a.m.

Sir Arthur Vere Harvey: I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for keeping you out of your bed at this late hour and to the hon. Lady the Minister of State to the Home Office, who probably has a very busy day tomorrow. I remember that, a year ago, during an Adjournment debate on this subject, she was very helpful, and I hope that she will be on this occasion.
The subject which I want to raise is the proposed penal settlement at Nether Alderley in my constituency. The first I heard of this was on 12th August this year, I wrote to the hon. Lady when I got back from my holiday at the end of August and asked why we were not told about it before the House broke up at the end of July. It is obvious, from what has happened since, that negotiations must have taken place with the War Office: there must have been discussions about the use of this land. But we were told at the beginning of August, the week after the Parliamentary Recess began.
This is an old tactic of Governments: my party has been guilty of it. They send hon. Members off for three months, hoping that they will be "over the hump" before they come back and the decisions will have been forgotten. So I excuse the hon. Lady in this matter. She said in her letter that they were in the process of consulting the Cheshire County Council and the Macclesfield Rural District Council about building this penal establishment, which would provide secure accommodation for 300 inmates and open accommodation for 400. I am told that the staff—with their families—required to take care of that number of prisoners totals about 1,200 to 1,500.
This site was formerly a War Department site which was used during the requisition in 1940 to store ammunition and raw materials like copper. Nobody wants a prison anywhere in the country, but such prisons are established. On the west coast, they are sited on islands and——

The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Alice Bacon): Hear, hear.

Sir A. V. Harvey: The hon. Lady says, "Hear, hear." I recognise and admit that there are many reasons why prisoners have to be suitably sited—if the staff are to be attracted to work there, there must be amenities, and relatives have to be able to visit the prisoners. All these factors have to be taken into account, but why take 217 acres of the best dairy agricultural land in Cheshire? I blame the hon. Lady's predecessors, the Conservative Ministers, who, to quote the popular phrase, "in 13 years" did not return this land to agricultural use. They should have done, and I regret all the more the fact that it is not being done now.
The plan to turn this immense site into a penal settlement does not fit in with the National Plan for more food production. Farmers are being pressed to increase their production by 1970, but this proposal has not been considered in that light. Three farmers work this site, with one farm of 100 acres and two of 30 acres. Mr. Beeby of Corbishley Farm tried to purchase the land in 1962, but was unsuccessful. I am informed that, in 1941, when the land was taken over—the previous owners had disappeared or died—an assurance was given that, when the site was given up, it would be offered back to the farmers or to their legal heirs and successors in title. When Purchase Tax was introduced I remember Mr. Attlee, as he then was, making a speech during the war, in which he said that this was only a temporary tax and would be taken off later—but it is still with us.
Mr. Beeby, who previously farmed at Marple—a small farmer and a hardworking chap with two sons growing up to help him—is to have his land taken over by compulsory purchase order in order that a new school should be built. He is having a pretty rough time. He has 10 or 15 acres outside the perimeter of the city. He will be ruined and the two other farmers will also be in great difficulty. What do the Ministers concerned with agriculture say? They have been remarkably coy about it in all the copies of correspondence I have seen.
There is a secondary site of 30 acres of lovely woodland, which I imagine would have to be cut down for security

reasons. I put a Question to the hon. Lady on 4th November referring to this land as being in the green belt area. She was quite correct in saying that it is not really in the green belt area in the eyes of the Ministry, but it is as far as the county council is concerned. That is not the fault of the local authority, because in 1961 a plan was submitted to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government by the Cheshire County Council and a public inquiry was arranged for October, 1962, but shortly before the date on which the local inquiry was due to be held the then Minister—one of my colleagues—stated that he had ordered a survey to be made of land needs and land availability in the area of the Manchester conurbation and proposed to defer consideration of green belt proposals until the survey had been completed.
That is all very well, but I have here details of about 20 applications for planning permission to build small houses for owner-occupation and for letting. In 1959 there was an application for 28 acres of land, and the reply from the Ministry said that:
The Minister's Inspector observed that the appeal sites were well within the Green Belt and he did not consider that the case presented any very special circumstances such as would justify permitting development in a Green Belt area.
In 1963 there was an application in respect of 12 acres of land off Sand Lane, Nether Alderley, in which case:
The inspector thought that the result of any development would be prejudicial to the concept of the Green Belt. The Minister agrees with his Inspector that no sufficient case has been established for the release of this land from Green Belt restrictions. Accordingly he hereby dismissed the appeal.
Then there was an application in respect of 70 acres at Yew Tree Farm, in which case the relevant letter said:
The Minister agrees with his Inspector's findings and recommendation that the proposal would substantially alter the character of Nether Alderley, seriously detract from the value of the proposed Green Belt and interfere with farming interests, for which there is no justification.
Then there was one more, concerning about 9 acres of land off Sand Lane, in respect of which the letter from the Ministry says:
The Minister accepts the local planning authority's contention that the proposal would upset the economy of the farm concerned and


might also prejudice their proposals.
So it goes on year after year. People badly wanting houses have been turned down because the Ministry contended that this was Green Belt area—and it is green belt area.
The Government cannot have it both ways. I contend that this district—only 16 miles south of Manchester—is making a full contribution to welfare work. There is a boys' approved school at Mobberley, with 135 boys, a women's prison at Styal, with 220 inmates, an epileptic colony at Soss Moss, with 420 inmates, the Mary Denby Homes for mental defectives, which cater for 454 people and, a little further away in Macclesfield, the Park-side Mental Hospital, with over 1,000 patients. It is not a question of giving land to stockbrokers, as has been suggested. There are a few of these people living there, as there are in the suburbs of any great city, but usually they are hard-working tenant farmers.
I understand that the Cheshire County Council submitted to the Home Office proposals for two alternative sites. It is not a question of wanting to get this proposed building outside my own constituency; there are areas between Macclesfield and Stoke—near the railway and on very indifferent land—which could be looked at. I understand that the two sites which the hon. Lady has in mind are on the border of Cheshire and Lancashire. If either of the two other alternative sites were selected, the local planning committee would agree. There is also a strong rumour of the possibility of a closed prison only on this site, or even on one of the other sites. That would contain 300 prisoners and would require 35 acres.
I would point out that school accommodation in this area is particularly short —the schools are very overcrowded. There is also the question of amenity. It is highly probable that there would be claims for reductions in rateable value assessments from those living nearby. There is also considerable over-employment in Macclesfield. We have a very successful industrial estate, with I.C.I. and other firms on it. They want 900 workers, but the percentage of unemployment is only 0·75—frankly, the unemployed consist of just a few people who are incapable of getting a job. I very much hope that the over-employment

situation will continue—but where are the Green Belt people to come from for this project?
There are 13 large storehouses on the site made of reinforced concrete and in very good condition. They could be used for the mass production of food in some form or another, and really contribute something worth while. With permission, I went round the site a week ago. I saw a rather "flash" car parked there, and I was told that it belonged to an Army officer. The Army still have the shooting rights of the site. Let me assure the hon. Lady that if she will turn this land back to agriculture, the three tenants will willingly continue the shooting rights to the soldiers who are using the land for that purpose.
Mine is a good average constituency. It has two boroughs in it, and a lot of small farmers—hill farmers and those on the plain. There is nothing very fancy about it. The people are good, honest, hard-working people, but I have never seen such indignation among them in 20 years as there is over this issue, because they feel that it is ill-considered and wrong.
Has the hon. Lady visited the site? If not, she should do so. It is not a question of a little bit of land with planning permission for a Government store, but an area of 217 acres. In years to come, with Manchester spreading southwards, we shall want park land, land for playing-fields, and so on, and we ought not to build on that site now. There is plenty of scrubland adjacent to Manchester where buildings can go up—but there should not be any building on this green belt. One gentleman wrote to the Daily Telegraph:
Can you imagine a penal settlement being built on Box Hill, Surrey? Well, it is about the same as building on the green belt in Cheshire, and I feel just as strongly about it.
If in the weeks and months ahead the Minister of State is in doubt, will she publish something on the lines of a White Paper, setting out all the details of this site and the other sites? A considerable sum has been raised by small donations at Nether Alderley to be used at a public inquiry, and I would ask the hon. Lady to give me a definite assurance that if there is any indication of going ahead with this project a public inquiry will be held, because this is a vital matter.
Most of the people involved are working-class people who pay their rates and taxes and have a right to know the facts. I hope that the Minister of State wi11, with her Department, think again about this, because I am quite certain that there are other sites that could be used for what she has in mind rather than using these 217 acres in the green belt area.

2.10 a.m.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Alice Bacon): The speech of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey), to which we have just listened, illustrates the difficulties which we at the Home Office have in building any prisons at all. I hope there is no dispute between the two sides of the House about the urgent need for more new prisons and other penal establishments. We have the legacy of old Victorian buildings. Not only are they old, but they were built for a different age. Most of them were designed in the last century on the principle of solitary confinement.
We have come a long way since then in our ideas of how best to treat offenders for their own benefit and for the protection of society. We now need to provide for every prison workshops in which prisoners can be engaged on purposeful modern industrial work so as to fit them for employment on discharge. We need classrooms and other facilities for a wide-ranging programme of education. We need dining rooms, gymnasia and better sanitary facilities, and we need improved security to defeat the ingenuity and resources of the determined criminal.
Not only are most of our prisons old; not only are they unsuited to our purposes; many of them, and especially the closed local prisons, are seriously overcrowded owing to the post-war increase in crime. There are still about 5,000 prisoners sleeping two and sometimes three to a cell intended for one. We must build new prisons, and we need them urgently. Therefore, we have got to find sites for them. This island of ours is a tight little island, and so many of the Government's plans for providing better conditions of life for the under-privileged entail an ever-increasing pressure on the available land. It is sometimes said that we ought to build prisons on remote moors or islands. But let me say at once that this is quite out of the ques-

tion. The sort of penal treatment in which we firmly believe needs resources from outside the prisons, as well as inside them.
Many prisoners need to be securely confined, but we do not believe in treating them as outcasts from society, allowed to have contact only with prison staff. We believe in the maintenance of family ties, the promotion of welfare facilities and the provision of services such as educational classes, which require teachers and others to come into prisons and help us and the prisoners.
We also have to think about security. A prison in a remote area would be unable to get assistance quickly from the police in case of need. But above all, we have also got to think of the prison officers and staff who are doing such an unenviable but magnificent job. We want the staff of prisons to he able to live normal lives and we cannot expect most of them to be willing to reside in small, remote communities of their own. Their wives and families need to be near schools and shops and social amenities.
Dartmoor prison has given us a great deal of experience of the difficulties of running a prison in a remote area. Dartmoor prison is to be closed because of its inaccessibility. Not only have I listened to the hon. Gentleman's speech tonight. I have also read all the newspaper reports of the protest meetings which have been held in the village of Nether Alderley. I have seen it stated that we ought to take our prisoners into very remote areas of the country, on moors and on islands. I am answering not only what the hon. Gentleman has said, but some of the criticism and talk—some of it rather wild talk—which has been indulged in in the newspaper reports which I have seen.

Sir A. V. Harvey: When there is indignation there will always be a few people who get on the wrong track. I tried to cover every point in my speech, showing humanity and patience, and, I hope, some appreciation of the requirements which the hon. Lady has in mind.

Miss Bacon: We should never be able to build prisons at all if we had to find sites to which no one objected. Although everybody likes schools and hospitals near to them, there are always objections to prisons, borstals and


approved schools. We at the Home Office find it very difficult indeed to plan our prison programme, because of the objections we receive.
But we must have prisons and we have to plan the distribution of new prisons in the light of the needs of each part of the country. We badly need more accommodation in the North-West, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will realise. The site at Nether Alderley is well placed to meet these requirements. Morover, as the hon. Gentleman realises, it is already Crown property. For financial reasons, and in order to minimise the disturbance of existing land use, we make every effort to use sites which are no longer needed by other Government Departments, as it the case at Nether Alderley.
Having found this site and having found that it was well suited to our requirements, we followed the normal procedure of writing to the planning authority, which is the Cheshire County Council, and the Macclesfield Rural District Council in order to give them an opportunity of making known their views on our proposals. We have since heard from the Macclesfield Rural District Council, which has given us a reasoned statement of its opposition, and we have received a number of letters from local residents, also expressing opposition.
Discussions have taken place between representatives of the county council and the Home Office, but the county council has not yet felt able to let us have its final views. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is well aware of the opposition that has so far been expressed. He will of course give the views of all concerned the most careful consideration. When he receives the county council's views, he will consider whether a public inquiry would be advisable.
I think that there may be some confusion about the possibility of a public inquiry into the Nether Alderley proposal and perhaps I can remove this by setting out the position. The Crown is not statutorily required to obtain planning consent to Government projects for development, but a general undertaking has been given that Departments will consult local planning authorities. A decision whether to proceed is taken in the

light of views of the appropriate council —in this case, the Cheshire County Council—and in consultation with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. In difficult cases and where there is a strong weight of local objection it is customary to hold a public local inquiry so as to establish fully all the relevant factors and claims and to show that full and proper consideration has been given to them.
In a case such as this, it would certainly be in accordance with practice to hold an inquiry. The county council would welcome it and may not be prepared to agree to the proposal unless one is held. I cannot speak for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, but he may well take the same view.
The Macclesfield Rural District Council has already opposed the proposal and called for a public inquiry. If there is a public inquiry—as I have said, it is the practice to hold an inquiry in cases such as these—I think that the public local inquiry would be the proper place for exploring many of the points which the hon. Gentleman has raised tonight—for instance, the question of agricultural land. I will say here that we have consulted the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, but so far we have received no objections from the Ministry about this. But this is something which a public inquiry will go into. As the hon. Gentleman realises, this is not a properly designated green belt area. Again, this is something which will be gone into.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the woodland having to come down. I remind him that the Prison Department has been responsible for planting many trees in various parts of the country.
The county council has suggested other sites for our consideration. We will certainly look at these, as we are doing, and at any others which have recently come to our notice, but I cannot say at present what the outcome will be. I must point out, however, that we cannot proceed from one proposal to another and then to another, and so on, only to find that the local interests in every case are strongly opposed to the building of a prison in their district. This would delay the project indefinitely and, as I have shown, the need is great and urgent.
My right hon. and learned Friend and I fully appreciate that few people would welcome a prison near their homes, but the fact remains that it must be built somewhere, and not in a too remote part of the country. There are no ideal sites with which everyone is content. It is fair to say, however, and this is what we have found over the years, that local opinion often—in fact almost invariably —changes once a prison has been built. The fears are found to be largely without foundation. The appearance of a prison of modern design is seen to be very different from that of our old prisons and far from a forbidding eyesore.
There are some fears lest an open prison should be built, but again experience has shown that there is far less fear of escapes from open prisons, having regard to the type of inmate we have in them, than there is of escapes from closed prisons. It is our experience that people who objected strongly to the building of a prison have come to take a great interest n it. The hon. Member said that a fighting fund had been raised in the village of Nether Alderley. I have seen reports in the newspapers that the people of Nether Alderley are trying to raise a fighting fund of £1,500. I hope that when the prison comes to be built near them they will raise another fund in future to help past inmates of prisons to get on their feet in such a way that they will not get back to prison again.

2.23 a.m.

Mr. Mark Carlisle: I am sure that the hon. Lady will accept from me, in my capacity as a resident living in reasonable neighbourhood of this proposed prison, that I accept every word that she says about the need of a prison and of the type required. But the hon.

Lady will appreciate that there are tremendous and genuinely felt planning objections to this proposal. She referred to the fact that the green belt in Cheshire was only proposed, but this applies to the whole of the county. I have appeared at inquiries relating to this land and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey) said, there is no doubt that planning permissions have been refused in the past on the basis that it is in the proposed green belt and only not in a full green belt because the county plan has not yet been confirmed.
Whatever the hon. Lady may see in the newspaper, I stress that there are genuine planning objections to building this prison in the middle of the green belt. I agree about open prisons. There is one in my constituency, which is thoroughly accepted and is an excellent institution. My hon. Friend spoke about the number of institutions in this area. I agree that we must have prisons reasonably near the centres of population, but there are other centres within reasonable distance of Manchester which would avoid the planning difficulties that this site raises. There are no schools in the area, and I understand that there are difficulties about sewerage and water. I beg the hon. Lady to look at other sites before taking this site. I remind her finally that the opposition in the area is very genuine and deep-felt, and I was glad to hear her assurance that a public inquiry will be held before a decision is made.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes past Two o'clock.